Wednesday, October 15, 2008

a KNOX without homeodomain

Title: KNOX lost the OX: the Arabidopsis KNATM gene defines a novel class of KNOX transcriptional regulators missing the homeodomain.
Source: Enrico Magnani & Sarah Hake. (2008) The Plant Cell 20:875-887. (paper here)

Notes:
KNATM is a new class of KNOX gene that has MEINOX, but has no homeodomain. Homeodomain is known to be essential for KNOX-KNOX interaction, so the lack of this domain could mean such function could be lost in KNATM. In contrast, the gene product is shown to form dimer with the KNOX protein BREVIPEDICELLUS through acidic coiled-coil domain. This is something new in homeobox genes.

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