Homeodomain Transcription Factor Family
Homeodomain proteins were initially discovered during the study of homeotic mutants in
Drosophila and have since been shown to play important roles in the developmental regulation of
all eukaryotic lineages. The homeodomain is a 60 amino acid domain that consists of three
helices and an N-terminal arm . The third helix lies in the major groove of the DNA, and along
with the N-terminal arm, is responsible for DNA recognition. The first homeobox gene found in
plants was knotted1 (kn1) that was isolated from maize plants carrying a dominant mutation that
alters leaf development . Subsequently, other plant homeodomain proteins were found and these
include hooded in barley that gives rise to modified flowers, glabra2 that results in a failure
to develop trichomes and Bell1 that is involved in ovule development. Additionally, the
homeodomain proteins WUSCHEL (WUS) and SHOOTMERISTEM-LESS (STM) have positive functions in
regulating stem cell fate in the shoot apical meristem . Plants also contain homeodomain leucine
zipper proteins (HDZip) where the homeodomain is associated with a leucine zipper. These are
found exclusively in the plant kingdom and appear to be regulators that response to
environmental factors .
147 predicted putative Homeodomain TF peptide ,
CDS, and cDNA sequences;
blast HSP, and gene level multiple sequence alignment in
Legume TFKB.
Homeobox domain peptide sequences with domain based
alignment and phylogeny tree.
73 Homeodomain protein
and DNA
sequences with
annotations for soybean in PlantTFDB. Most are partial sequences.
Last updated by Dr. Jeff Chen
on June 5, 2009.
