Figure 2

Maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree of human PRD-class homeodomains. Arbitrarily rooted phylogenetic tree of human PRD-class homeodomains constructed using the maximum likelihood method. Bootstrap values supporting internal nodes with over 70% are shown. Homeodomain sequences derived from pseudogenes are excluded, as are the partial homeodomains of PAX2, PAX5 and PAX8, and the HOPX homeodomain because its extremely divergent sequence destabilizes the overall tree topology. Roman numeral suffixes are used to distinguish multiple homeodomains encoded by a single Dux-family gene. In this tree Dux-family homeodomains are not monophyletic, even within the same gene; however, monophyly is recovered by neighbor-joining analysis (Additional file 4). Detailed relationships between different gene families should not be inferred from this tree.