Hoxc

The objective of our proposal is to create a phylogenetic tree examining the possibility of using the HOXC gene as an indicator of the phylogeny. One specific aim of the proposal is to identify highly conserved genes that are present in vertebrates. In preliminary work, we found that one example of a highly conserved gene is the BOP1 gene present in ribosomal DNA. Further research done on HOX genes has noted that the duplication of HOX clusters is shared by all vertebrae (Ruddle et al. 1994).