Investigation of steroid receptor function in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Steroid hormones are small lipophilic molecules that control a wide range of responses in both the developing and adult organism. The actions of these molecules are mediated by soluble receptor proteins that function as hormone-activated transcription factors. The first steroid receptors were expressed in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisae over 10 years ago, and to date virtually all the classical steroid receptors, together with a number of non-steroid members of the nuclear receptor superfamily, have been expressed in yeast. The ability to reconstitute steroid receptor signalling in yeast cells by co-expression of the receptor protein and a reporter gene driven by the appropriate hormone response element has presented researchers with a powerful model system for investigating receptor action. Tn this review, the use of yeast-based steroid receptor transactivation assays to investigate the roles of molecular chaperones, the mechanisms of DNA binding and gene activation, and the functional properties of hormone mimics will be discussed. (C) 1999 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.