My Personal Science Nerd

Have you ever had an interior designer???

Maybe you don’t know it, but you’ve had more than one: Hox Genes. Just like the guys with great hair and perfect taste in wine, hox genes are responsible for the way you get mapped out while mom is pregnant with you.

Let’s start at the beginning… the PG13 version. So mom and dad flirt… FASTFORWARD… you’re now a zygote. Welcome to the world. You’ve got nine months of preparation before you can come out to play, so there’s not a moment to waste. You’ve got a few million cells to produce… time for crazy amounts of mitosis!!

But wait… mitosis produces identical cells. Right? And if all the cells are the same, then you end up with a blob and not a baby… right?

Yup! So there has to be something done to make the cells different. Que the hox genes. Almost immediately after the signals are sent through the cell that say “HEY! We’ve been fertilized!”, the designers are expressed that say “LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN!! I want this arm put over here, and I want you to put that leg over – HEY! You can’t put an ear there! Have you ever HEARD of good taste?!?!?”

.
Okokok, so proteins don’t actually talk. But essentially, that’s what hox genes do. They set up the “chemical environment” of the cells, and the other genes that make a baby obey the gradients of…. you know what? I’m getting tongue tied here, so I know you probably don’t know what’s going on.

.
Genes are dumb little ugly gremlins that do only what they’re told and nothing more. They all already know their instructions: When your room is painted blue and someone upgrades your cable to digital, make this protein… Don’t ask questions, just do it.
Obviously, all the genes can’t be given those same conditions, or else we’d have the same problem: all the genes would be making all proteins at the same time… BLOB BABY. So, many genes have different conditions, but not all (sometimes it’s better to have more than one gene respond to the same conditions… i’ll write a post on that later).

.
NOW, coming full circle! Hox genes are some of the first genes that are expressed during development. The main purpose of the proteins that they make are to SERVE AS THE CONDITIONS THAT TELL OTHER GENES WHEN TO BE EXPRESSED. So let’s say that there’s a cell in the tail region of a fetus puppy that’s expressing hox gene named Mustard. It’s going to release those proteins into the space between cells and those proteins are gonna float around. The farther that any cell is away from that tail cell, the fewer of those hox proteins will be floating around. Eventually, you’ll get to the point that some cells won’t even realize that those proteins are even there… SO THE GENES THAT ARE TURNED ON BY Mustard WON’T BE TURNED ON PAST THAT POINT.

.

This means that some cells are going to be expressing different proteins than other cells and NO MORE BLOB BABY!! WOOT!!!

Trackback URL

development, genetics, hox gene