Abstract
The Ventx family is one of the subfamilies of the ANTP (antennapedia) superfamily andbelongs to the NK-like (NKL) subclass. The Ventx family is a homeobox transcription factor and has a DNA-interacting domain evolutionarily conserved throughout vertebrates. It has been extensively studied in Xenopus, zebrafish, and human. The Ventx family contains transcriptional repressors widely involved in embryonic development and tumorigenesis in vertebrates. Several studies have documented that the Ventx family inhibited dorsal mesodermal formation, neural induction, and head formation in Xenopus and zebrafish. Moreover, Ventx2.2 showed functional similarities to Nanog and Barx1, leading to pluripotency and neural-crest migration in vertebrates. Among them, Ventx protein is an orthologue of the Ventx family in humans. Studies have demonstrated that human Ventx was strongly associated with myeloid-cell differentiation and acute myeloid leukemia.The therapeutic potential of Ventx family inhibition in combating cancer progression in humans is discussed. Additionally, we briefly discuss genome evolution, gene duplication, pseudo-allotetraploidy, and the homeobox family in Xenopus.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 2741 |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Journal | International Journal of Molecular Sciences |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2022 |
Keywords
- Xenopus
- Zebrafish
- Embryonic development
- Homeobox Nanog
- Genome evolution
- Tumorigenesis
- Ventx family
Access to Document
- Kumar_2022_IJMS_Ventx_CC
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons At‐ tribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/license/by/4.0/).