ABSTRACT
Stuart A. Tobet, Tammy Dellovade, Keith Parker, and Gregg Homanics
CONTENTS
I. Introduction................................................................................... 59 II. Changes in Subcellular Location of ER
α
with Ontogeny ......... 62 III. Estrogen and Cell Migration........................................................ 62 IV. The VMH as a Model for Determining Cell Positions .............. 63 V. Acknowledgments ........................................................................ 67
References ............................................................................................... 68
Gonadal steroids have wide-ranging effects on neural organization and activity in many areas of the vertebrate central nervous system. A growing number of studies show that estrogen receptors alpha (ER
α
) and beta (ER
β
) are expressed in the nervous system early in development in several species. Groups of neurons in the hypothalamus are known to coalesce under the developmental influence of estrogen (reviewed in reference 1). Investigators have hypothesized for many years that gonadal steroids cause changes in neuronal birth, survival, migration, and differentiation,
contributing to the establishment of long-term sexual dimorphisms throughout the nervous system. However, more information is needed about how estrogen influences neurons during development, or how neurons that respond to estrogen attain their fate (i.e., location and identity).
