 Introducing a conceptually legitimate idea of homology of activity-function is not about keeping the ideas of developmental biology tidy. It assists in the interpretation of evidence and circumscribes the inferences drawn. For example, NK-2 genes are involved in mesoderm specification, which underlies muscle morphogenesis. In Drosophila, the expression of a particular NK-2 gene (tinman) is critical for both cardiac and visceral mesoderm development. If tinman is knocked out and transgenically replaced with its vertebrate orthologue, Nkx2-5, only visceral mesoderm specification is rescued; the regulation of cardiac mesoderm is not (Ranganayakulu et al. 1998). A region of the vertebrate protein near the 5′ end of the polypeptide differs enough to prevent appropriate regulation in cardiac morphogenesis. The homeodomains (stretches of sequence that confer DNA binding) for vertebrate Nkx2-5 and Drosophila tinman are interchangeable. The inability of Nkx2-5 to rescue cardiac mesoderm specification is not related to the activity-function of differential DNA binding. One component of the orthologous (homologous) proteins in both species retains an activity-function homology related to visceral mesoderm specification but another component (not the homeodomain) has diverged. This homeobox gene does not have a single use-function (as expected), but it also does not have a single activity-function. Any adequate evaluation of these cases must recognize a more fine-grained decomposition of genes into working units to capture genuine activity-function conservation. We can link activity-function homologues directly to structural motifs within a gene, but there is not necessarily a single activity-function for an entire open reading frame.