ABSTRACT

The steroid hormone receptors belong to a large family of transcriptional regulators which also includes receptors for vitamin D, retinoic acid, thyroid hormone and a growing number of orphan receptors for which regulatory ligands have not been identified (Mangelsdorf et al., 1995; Mangelsdorf and Evans 1995; Beato et al., 1995; Kastner et al., 1995). These are modular proteins that contain separable domains for binding a regulatory ligand, for binding DNA response elements, and for interaction with other transcription factors.