Skip Navigation


Journal of Biochemistry Advance Access originally published online on December 13, 2007
Journal of Biochemistry 2008 143(3):407-416; doi:10.1093/jb/mvm235
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
143/3/407    most recent
mvm235v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Itakura, T.
Right arrow Articles by Miura, N.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Itakura, T.
Right arrow Articles by Miura, N.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 2007 The Japanese Biochemical Society.

The Medaka FoxP2, a Homologue of Human Language Gene FOXP2, has a Diverged Structure and Function

Tatsuo Itakura1, Abhishek Chandra1, Zhi Yang1, XiaoDong Xue1, Bo Wang1, Wataru Kimura1, Keisuke Hikosaka1, Keiji Inohaya2, Akira Kudo2, Tadayoshi Uezato1 and Naoyuki Miura1,*

1Department of Biochemistry, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, 1-20-1 Handa-yama, Higashi-ku, Hamamatsu 431-3192; and 2Department of Biological Information, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama 226-8501, Japan

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +81 53 435 2325, Fax: +81 53 435 2369, E-mail: nmiura{at}hama-med.ac.jp

Received October 13, 2007; Accepted November 22, 2007


  Abstract

Forkhead box (Fox) genes are involved in organogenesis and cell differentiation. A mutation of FOXP2 was discovered in patients with severe defects in speech and language. The medaka FoxP2 was cloned in order to clarify the molecular evolution and difference in the protein structure and function by comparing human/mouse and medaka genes. The result showed that medaka FoxP2 had a 73.7% homology to the human and mouse counterparts, and its zinc finger, leucine zipper and forkhead domain structures were conserved. However, medaka FoxP2 lacked a long polyglutamine repeat and had two insertions of unique amino acid sequences. FoxP2 expression was found in the epiphysis and retina, in addition to the midbrain and cerebellum. The transcriptional assay revealed that medaka FoxP2 showed a very weak repressive activity to the CC10 promoter while mouse Foxp2 exhibited a strong repressive activity. Mutational analyses of medaka FoxP2 showed that the three amino acids of forkhead domain were responsible for the weak repressive activity. These results suggest that medaka FoxP2 may play a different function in the development of the medaka fish.

Key Words: forkhead domain, FoxP2, language gene, medaka, molecular evolution

Abbreviations: DAPI, 4,6-Diamidino-2-phenylindole; dpf, days post-fertilization; EST, expression sequence tag; HRP, horseradish peroxidase; hpf, hours post-fertilization; IPTG, isopropyl-β-d-thiogalactopyranoside; PBS, phosphate-buffered saline


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.