Homeodomain transcription factors (HD TFs) are a large class of evolutionarily conserved DNA binding proteins that contain a basic 60-amino acid region required for binding to specific DNA sites. In Drosophila melanogaster, many of these HD TFs are expressed in the early embryo and control transcription of target genes in development through their interaction with cis-regulatory modules. Our collaborators from the Drewell and Spratt labs have developed a streamlined expression and purification protocol to produce large yields of Drosophila HD TFs. These purified HD TFs are currently being used in biophysical experiments to structurally and biochemically characterize the ability of these HD TFs to bind to different DNA sequences. Our lab is utilizing bioinformatic and statistical tools to analyze this data and further probe how nucleotide differences contribute to TF-DNA specificity in the HD family.
