Summary
In mammals the HOX network consists of 39 genes which encode master regulators of developmental processes including hematopoiesis. Many of the chromosomal translocations associated with acute leukemias involve HOX genes directly or some of their regulatory factors, e.g., mixed lineage leukaemia (MLL), leading to inappropriate expression of certain subsets of the genes. Evolutionarily, the HOX genes are thought to have arisen by duplication and divergence from a primordial gene. Consequently, they exhibit a high degree of sequence similarity, particularly in the homeobox domain. HOX gene expression, the HOXOME, can be quantified by real-time quantitative PCR (RQ-PCR) using carefully selected reagents. In practice, an RQ-PCR platform based on Taqman probe chemistry has proved valuable for the precise measurement of individual human and murine HOX genes with a high degree of specificity, over a wide dynamic range. Defining the roles for HOX in hematopoiesis should help to elucidate the mechanisms of deregulation in leukemia and eventually identify targets for therapeutic intervention.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge Dr David Grier who played a significant role in designing the murine Hox RQ-PCR platform, its validation, and generation of standard curve values and Dr Momin Ahmed, Dr Sean Grimes, Dr Claire O’Neill, and Miss Alexandra Kwasniewska for help in generating and validating human HOX PPP sets. We are grateful to the R&D Office for Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Leukaemia Research Fund for funding this work.
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© 2009 Humana Press, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Dickson, G., Lappin, T., Thompson, A. (2009). Complete Array of HOX Gene Expression by RQ-PCR. In: Eric So, C.W. (eds) Leukemia. Methods in Molecular Biology™, vol 538. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-418-6_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-418-6_19
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