Organization of human class I homeobox genes.

We report the genomic organization of 20 human class I homeoboxes and the predicted primary sequence of the encoded homeodomains. These homeoboxes are clustered in four complex HOX loci on chromosomes 2, 7, 12, and 17. The homeoboxes of one HOX locus can be aligned to the homeoboxes of the other HOX loci so that corresponding homeodomains in all loci can share the maximal peptide sequence identity. This correspondence of individual homeoboxes in different chromosomal loci suggests the hypothesis of large-scale duplications of a single complex locus. The existence of an ancestral complex locus might have predated the divergence of vertebrates and invertebrates.