Function Of Dlx5 Gene In Development Of Mouse Tooth Germ

Tooth development and mineralization is constituted by the interactions between epithelial-mesenchymal cells and tissues. At the molecular level, these interactions involve complex signaling networks composed of growth factors, their receptors, signal molecules, transcription factors and extracellular matrix proteins. Transcription factors can control the transcription of their target genes when they bind to the DNA-binding sites on their promoters. They can transfer the messages of growth factors and so on to those effective molecules.A likely class of genes for regulating dental morphogenesis is the homeobox genes.These transcription regulators are expressed in many complex differentiating systems in invertebrates and vertebrates, in particular, systems that are morphologically segmented along a linear anatomic axis.The term "homeodomain" has evolved to define a class of protein domains that has recognizable similarity to a 60 amino acid motif(encoded by 183bp homeobox sequences)originally recognized in three Drosophila homeotic and segmentation proteins.The homeodomains that have been tested contain sequence-specific DNA binding activities and are part of larger proteins that function as transcriptional regulators.So far, in Hox gene family, researchers have found 5 members: Dlx, Lhx, Msx, Pax and Barx.Dlx gene is the important gene in development of tooth germ. Some foreign...