Homeobox protein Hox-C5 is a
protein
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residue (biochemistry), residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including Enzyme catalysis, catalysing metab ...
that in
humans
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...
is encoded by the ''HOXC5''
gene
In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...
.
Function
This gene belongs to the
homeobox
A homeobox is a Nucleic acid sequence, DNA sequence, around 180 base pairs long, that regulates large-scale anatomical features in the early stages of embryonic development. Mutations in a homeobox may change large-scale anatomical features of ...
family of genes. The homeobox genes encode a highly conserved family of
transcription factors
In molecular biology, a transcription factor (TF) (or sequence-specific DNA-binding factor) is a protein that controls the rate of transcription of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA, by binding to a specific DNA sequence. The fun ...
that play an important role in
morphogenesis
Morphogenesis (from the Greek ''morphê'' shape and ''genesis'' creation, literally "the generation of form") is the biological process that causes a cell, tissue or organism to develop its shape. It is one of three fundamental aspects of deve ...
in all
multicellular organisms
A multicellular organism is an organism that consists of more than one cell, unlike unicellular organisms. All species of animals, land plants and most fungi are multicellular, as are many algae, whereas a few organisms are partially uni- and pa ...
.
Mammals
A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three middle e ...
possess four similar homeobox gene clusters, HOXA, HOXB, HOXC and HOXD, which are located on different
chromosomes
A chromosome is a package of DNA containing part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes, the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with nucleosome-forming packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells, the most importa ...
and consist of 9 to 11 genes arranged in tandem. This gene, HOXC5, is one of several homeobox HOXC genes located in a cluster on
chromosome 12
Chromosome 12 is one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in humans. People normally have two copies of this chromosome. Chromosome 12 spans about 133 million base pairs (the building material of DNA) and represents between 4 and 4.5 percent of the tot ...
. Three genes, HOXC5,
HOXC4
Homeobox protein Hox-C4 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''HOXC4'' gene.
Function
This gene belongs to the homeobox family of genes. The homeobox genes encode a highly conserved family of transcription factors that play an import ...
and
HOXC6, share a 5' non-coding
exon
An exon is any part of a gene that will form a part of the final mature RNA produced by that gene after introns have been removed by RNA splicing. The term ''exon'' refers to both the DNA sequence within a gene and to the corresponding sequence ...
. Transcripts may include the shared exon spliced to the gene-specific exons, or they may include only the gene-specific exons. Two alternatively spliced variants have been described for HOXC5. The transcript variant which includes the shared exon apparently doesn't encode a protein. The protein-coding transcript variant contains gene-specific exons only.
References
Further reading
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External links
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Transcription factors
{{gene-12-stub