[Bone and calcium update; bone research update. Role of steroid hormones in regulation of the epigenesis]

Fat-soluble ligands like steroid hormones exert their actions through nuclear receptor-mediated transcriptional controls. Nuclear receptors are hormone-dependent transcription factors, and their ligand-dependent function is facilitated by transcriptional co-regulators, that were initially considered to bridge nuclear receptors with transcription initiation complex. However, recent progress in epigenome and chromatin research has uncovered that hormone-dependent transcriptional controls by nuclear receptors require a number of epigenetic/transcriptional co-regurators facilitating chromatin reorganization.