Estrogen Receptor Regulation of Vitellogenin Gene Transcription and Chromatin Structure

Despite remarkable advances in our understanding of the organization of eukaryotic genes, the mechanisms by which eukaryotic gene expression is regulated remain one of the major unresolved questions in biochemistry and molecular biology. A major approach to this problem has been through analysis of the mechanisms of steroid hormone action at the gene level. For the last several years we have been investigating the estrogen induction of vitellogenin gene transcription in liver cells of male Xenopus laevis and using this as a relatively simple model system for regulated gene expression in eukaryotes.