The Meis genes are a member of the homeobox super-family of genes that code for the production of transcription factors. Homologs of the Meis genes have been identified in all animals studied and have been found to be expressed in similar patterns during the embryonic development of those animals. The products of the Meis genes are able to directly regulate the expression of target genes but are most well-known for functioning as cofactors, directly interacting with other transcription factors as well as DNA to facilitate transcriptional regulation. Most notably, they appear to act as co-factors of the evolutionarily well-conserved Hox proteins and have also been described as acting with other transcription factors on DNA. Despite being fairly well-characterized in terms of their molecular function and expression during development, little is known concerning how their expression is regulated. We have identified four highly conserved noncoding elements associated with the vertebrate Meis2 gene and named them m2de1-4 (for Meis2 downstream element). While M2de2-4 have to date only been found in land vertebrates, m2de1 is also found in teleosts including zebrafish. Interestingly these elements are found in the introns of an adjacent gene, zgc:154061 in zebrafish, whose orthologs are always found in an inverted convergently transcribed orientation directly downstream of Meis2 in vertebrates. Our hypothesis is that the genomic organization of these two linked genes has been preserved due to them sharing cis-regulatory elements. To test this, we have examined the expression patterns of meis2a and zgc:154061 as well as the expression of a reporter transgene directed by m2de1 in zebrafish.