preview

Estrogen Receptors Essay

Satisfactory Essays

Estrogen receptors: Estrogens act via two types of receptors (ERα and ERβ), which are members of a large super family of proteins that function as ligand-activated transcription factors (Katzenellenbogen and Katzenellenbogen, 1996). Both receptors have direct differentiative influences on reproductive organs and have similar binding affinity to estradiol (Kuiper et al., 1997; Drummond et al., 1999). Although, there are significant amino acid differences in the regions of these receptors that would be expected to influence transcriptional activity (Hall and McDonnell, 1999). More recently, two Estrogen-Related Receptors, (ERRα/ERR1) and (ERRβ/ERR2) have also been characterized.
The presence of oestrogen receptors have been shown within the hypothalamus, pituitary, ovary, oviduct, uterus, cervix and vagina of several species including …show more content…

Estrogen signaling is selectively stimulated or inhibited depending upon a balance between ERα and ERβ activities in target organs. ERs have five distinct regions (Skafar and Zhao, 2008). These distinct regions correspond to functional and structural units called domain (Fig. 1). The N-terminal of the A and B domains are highly conserved only between chicken and human estrogen receptors, but this distinction is much less clear in the other steroid Receptors. Therefore, region A and B are combined into A/B region in most cases. This region is a modulatory region and it is the most variable both in size and sequence. The A/B domain consists of Activation Function 1 (AF1), which contributes to the transcriptional activity of ERs and is an

Get Access