Scientists at the University of Utah have retrogressed the genetic development of a mouse, reconstructing a half-billion-year-old gene by combining key portions of
two modern mouse genes that descended from the archaic gene.
The study focused on so-called Hox genes which direct the actions of other genes during the development of an animal embryo. Early animals had 13 Hox genes, but sometime between 530 million and 480 million years ago each Hox gene split into four, so 13 became 52. Duplicate Hox genes later either mutated in a way that proved useful, or vanished because they were redundant, so today in humans and other mammals there are 39 instead of 52 Hox genes. Researchers Mario Capecchi and Petr Tvrdik say that by combining critical portions of two later genes, Hox1a and Hox1b, they effectively recreated a gene with the function that the original Hox1 performed more than 530 million years ago.
The ability to reconstruct an ancient gene from descendant genes raises the possibility of a new type of gene therapy in which a portion of a related gene could be inserted into a disease-causing mutant gene to restore its normal function and cure the disease, Capecchi and Tvrdik say.
The study titled Reversal of Hox1 Gene Subfunctionalization in the Mouse was published in the journal Developmental Cell. A press account describing the work, with before-and-after photos of mice, is posted at the University of Utah web site.
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