On the nature of thumbs 英文参考文献.docVIP

Minireview On the nature of thumbs Günter P Wagner and Alexander O Vargas Address: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8106, USA. Correspondence: Günter P Wagner. Email: gunter.wagner@ Published: 3 March 2008 Genome Biology 2008, 9:213 (doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-3-213) The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2008/9/3/213 ? 2008 BioMed Central Ltd Abstract Asymmetric regulation of Hox gene expression pre-dates the appearance of tetrapod digits, and was co-opted in the development of ‘thumbness’. This asymmetric expression correlates with independent morphological evolutionary variation of digit 1. Each finger on your hand is uniquely identified by its relative size, position and shape. But on closer inspection, only one digit is really different from the rest - the thumb (digit 1). Digit 1 has two bones (phalanges) whereas all the other fingers have three. Only the thumb can be moved away from the other digits, a phenomenon called opposability, and on a more subtle anatomical level, growth of the corresponding metacarpal bone in the hand is proximal for the thumb but distal for all the other digits. In every respect the thumb stands out (no pun intended) as qualitatively different. With the appearance of a paper in Genes and Development by Montavon et al. [1], we now have a detailed understanding of some of the molecular mechanisms that make this anterior- most digit special. association between the absence of HoxD-12 to HoxD-10 expression and thumb identity is causally important. Misexpression of HoxD-12 [4] or HoxD-11 [5] in the digit 1 territory often leads to a digit 2-like morphology in the first digit. The thumb’s characteristic gene-expression pattern even follows it when, during evolution, the digits have shifted their embryological pos