Transcriptional coregulators of the nuclear receptor superfamily: coactivators and corepressors

Nuclear receptors, many of which undergo a major conformational change upon binding specific ligand, belong to a superfamily of proteins that bind to specific DNA sequences and control gene transcription. They regulate the assembly of a transcriptional preinitiation complex at the promoter of target genes and modulate their expression in response to ligand. In particular, nuclear receptors repress or stimulate transcription by recruiting corepressor or co-activator proteins, in addition to directly contacting the basal transcription machinery. In this review, we discuss recent progress in studies of these transcriptional coregulators of nuclear receptors.