Genomic Collaboration of Estrogen Receptor-α and ERK2 in Regulating Gene and Proliferation Programs

The nuclear hormone receptor, estrogen receptor-alpha (ERα), and MAP kinases both play key roles in hormone-dependent cancers, yet their interplay and the integration of their signaling inputs remain poorly understood. In these studies, we document that estrogen-occupied ERα activates and interacts with ERK2, a downstream effector in the MAPK pathway, resulting in ERK2 and ERα colocalization at chromatin binding sites across the genome of breast cancer cells. KEYWORDS: siRNA knock-down, ligand treatment MCF-7 human breast adenocarcinoma cells were tranfected with control, ERK1 and ERK2 siRNA for 60 hours and treated with 0.1% EtOH (Vehicle) or 10 nM E2 for 4 hours or 24 hours, and cDNA microarray analyses were carried out using Affymetrix [HG-U133A_2] Affymetrix Human Genome U133A 2.0 Array.