Mechanism of Transcriptional Regulation by Androgen Receptor and its Coactivators in the Context of Chromatin
Abstract
Androgens play important roles in the differentiation, development and maintenance of male reproductive functions, as well as in the etiology of prostate cancer. The biological effects of androgens are believed to be mediated through the intracellular androgen receptor (AR), which belongs to the nuclear receptor (NR) superfamily of ligand-regulated transcription factors. Like other NRs, the actions of AR are subject to modulation, either positively or negatively, by an increasing number of co-regulatory proteins, termed coactivators or corepressors. Coactivators are believed to function either as bridging factors between receptors and basal transcription machinery to enhance recruitment of the basal transcription machinery and/or as factors that have capacity to actively remodel repressive chromatin. The purpose of this research is to study the mechanism by which coactivators modulate AR activity in chromatin, the physiological template of transcriptional regulation. In this progress report, we report that we have analyzed how SRC family coactivators and p300 modulate AR activity in the context of chromatin using Xenopus oocyte as a model system. We demonstrate that p300 requires both its histone acetyltransferase activity and interaction with SRC family coactivators to stimulate AR activity. Surprisingly, we also observed that AR possesses an intrinsic hormone-independent activity when AR is overexpressed. Coactivators such as SRC and p300 can further augment this hormone-independent activity by AR. We propose that this intrinsic hormone-independent activity could be relevant to the function of AR in hormone-independent prostate cancer.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA404652
Entities
People
- Jiemin Wong
Organizations
- Baylor College of Medicine