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Robert Kaptein (University of Utrecht, The Netherlands): "There has been enormous interest in the molecular mechanism of hormone response in recent years. Molecular biologists had found out that the receptors for steroid hormones form a family of proteins that activate the transcription of certain genes in a hormone-dependent fashion. These proteins have similar architecture, consisting of separately folded modules for their various functions, such as hormone binding, DNA binding, and transactivation. Our paper describes the first three-dimensional structure of one of these modules: the DNA- binding domain of the glucocorticoid receptor. It contains two so-called zinc fingers (peptide loops with four cysteine residues that bind Zn2+ ions) and two a helices following the finger regions. A model for the protein-DNA complex is proposed that puts one of these helices ...
