Endocrine Abstracts

Estrogen receptors (ER) play a crucial role in development, reproduction and normal physiology. Even though the concept of ER gene mutations was thought to be lethal. Gene targeting allowed us to produce lines of mice with disrupted ER-alpha (alpha-ERKO) and ER-beta genes (beta-ERKO) as well as a compound alpha/beta-ERKO. Comparable levels of ER-beta mRNA in tissues of alpha-ERKO mice suggesting that ER-beta expression is not dependent on ER-alpha. Estrogen, EGF or IGF-1 treat...