A Subset of Nuclear Receptor Coregulators Act as Coupling Proteins during Synthesis and Maturation of RNA Transcripts

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Abstract
Transcriptional stimuli, such as steroid hormones (i.e., androgens, progestins, estrogen, etc.), change the expression of their target genes by binding and modulating the activity of their nuclear receptors (NRs), which recognize and bind specific sequences within target gene promoters. NRs share a signature modular structure consisting of a C-terminal ligand-dependent transcriptional activation domain (AF-2), a central DNA binding domain, and an N-terminal ligand-independent transcriptional activation domain (AF-1) (55, 60). When bound to their target promoters, and like other transcription factors, NRs recruit coregulatory proteins termed coactivators or corepressors that activate or inhibit transcription. Since their discovery in the mid-1990s, the number of transcriptional coregulators has rapidly increased to more than 150. An exhaustive list of NR coregulators is available on the Nuclear Receptor Signaling Atlas website, http://www.nursa.org/index.cfm . Several reviews concerning coregulators have been recently published (5, 14, 29, 42, 60), and we will only briefly describe the background knowledge of their known roles in transcription.