Fitness Assays Reveal Incomplete Functional Redundancy of the HoxA1 and HoxB1 Paralogs of Mice.

ABSTRACT: Gene targeting techniques have led to the phenotypic characterization of numerous genes; however, many genes show minimal to no phenotypic consequences when disrupted, despite many having highly conserved sequences. The standard explanation for these findings is functional redundancy. A competing hypothesis is that these genes have important ecological functions in natural environments that are not needed under laboratory settings. Here we discriminate between these hypotheses by competing mice (Mus musculus) whose Hoxb1 gene has been replaced by Hoxa1, its highly conserved paralog, against matched wild-type controls in seminatural enclosures. This Hoxb1(A1) swap was reported as a genetic manipulation resulting in no discernible embryonic or physiological phenotype under standard laborator

SUBMITTER: Ruff JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4596679 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature