What does the Pitx1 gene do?
The PITX1 gene provides instructions for making a protein that plays a critical role in development of the lower limbs. The protein acts as a transcription factor, which is a protein that attaches (binds) to specific regions of DNA and helps control the activity of particular genes.
What regions are under the control of the Pitx1 gene?
The Pitx1 gene has multiple regulatory switches that control the expression of the gene in different tissues: the pituitary, jaw, and pelvic tissues. Having multiple switches enables Pitx1 to be used many times in different contexts and expands the versatility of that gene.
What is the Pitx1 gene in stickleback fish?
A fish inherits a mutation in the Pitx1 coding region. This is a nonsense mutation that introduces a premature stop codon, resulting in a nonfunctional truncated protein. You isolate DNA from jaw, pelvic, eye, and pituitary tissues.
What does the Pitx1 gene do in sticklebacks?
Mike Shapiro, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar and co-first author, found that a gene located at that region is the stickleback version of a gene in mice called Pitx1 that, when mutated, causes mice to have greatly reduced hind limbs. These mice often have asymmetric limb and pelvic reductions, much like the sticklebacks.
How is Pitx1 expressed in different tissues?
How is Pitx1 expressed in different tissues? The Pitx1 gene has multiple regulatory switches that control the expression of the gene in different tissues: the pituitary, jaw, and pelvic tissues. Having multiple switches enables Pitx1 to be used many times in different contexts and expands the versatility of that gene.
Is Pitx1 a Hox gene?
Paired-like homeodomain 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the PITX1 gene….
| PITX1 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Species | Human | Mouse |
| Entrez | 5307 | 18740 |
| Ensembl | ENSG00000069011 | ENSMUSG00000021506 |
| UniProt | P78337 | P70314 |
How does Pitx1 gene expression differ between marine and freshwater fish?
Marine fish have prominent spines, presumably to deter predators, but the freshwater fish have only small ones, if any at all. By using genetic markers to follow Pitx1 expression during development, they found that it was active in the incipient pelvic girdle of marine sticklebacks but not in the freshwater fish.
What caused the lake sticklebacks to lose expression of their Pitx1?
Pelvic loss in different natural populations of threespine stickleback fish has occurred by regulatory mutations deleting a tissue-specific enhancer of the Pituitary homeobox transcription factor 1 (Pitx1) gene.