HOX and MEINOX in cellular plasticity, fibrosis, and cancer

Figure 2 HOX-PBX-MEINOX DNA binding affinity and transcriptional effectiveness. HOX proteins form stable dimers with PBX cofactors, which exhibit limited transcriptional activity. The addition of MEINOX cofactors (MEIS and PKNOX), facilitating the formation of HOX-PBX-MEINOX trimers, significantly enhances both the DNA-binding specificity and transcriptional output[32,34,195,196]. In this review, PBX proteins are considered a constant, essential component required for complete functional activity, while HOX and MEINOX proteins are treated as dynamic variables reflecting biological complexity and disease-specific regulatory states. Created in BioRender.