Misexpression of Hoxa-13 induces cartilage homeotic transformation and changes cell adhesiveness in chick limb buds

During chick limb development, the Abd-B subfamily of genes in the HoxA cluster are expressed in a region-specific manner along the proximodistal axis. To elucidate the function of Hoxa-13 that is expressed in the autopod during normal limb development, Hoxa-13 was misexpressed in the entire limb bud with a replication-competent retroviral system. Misexpression of Hoxa-13 resulted in a remarkable size reduction of the zeugopodal cartilages as a result of the arrest of cartilage cell growth and differentiation restricted in the zeugopod. This size reduction seems to be attributable to homeotic transformation of the cartilages in the zeugopod to the more distal cartilage, that of the carpus/tarsus. This transformation was specific to Hoxa-13 and was not observed by overexpression of other Hox genes. These results indicate that Hoxa-13 is responsible for switching the genetic code from long bone formation to short bone formation during normal development. When the limb mesenchymal cells were dissociated and cultured in vitro, Hoxa-13-expressing limb mesenchymal cells reassociated and were sorted out from nonexpressing cells. Forced expression of Hoxa-13 at the stage that endogenous Hoxa-13 was not expressed as of yet altered the homophilic cell adhesive property. These findings indicate the involvement of Hoxa-13 in determining homophilic cell-to-cell adhesiveness that is supposed to be crucial for the cartilage pattern formation.