homeotic genes

Genes that control the development of an animal's body plan.

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The original homeobox/homeotic genes may have functioned early on as regulators of the newfangled sexual cycle, but were then co-opted as they accidentally got accidentally duplicated, diversified by random mutation, and then co-opted as regulators of anatomical development in the multicellular animals, plants, algae, and fungi, the authors of a 2009 paper in Cell suggest.