The rapidly unfolding story of the nuclear receptor superfamily has radically changed the understanding of hormone action. One of the subgroups of that superfamily appears to have evolved at least 500 million years ago prior to the divergence of arthropod and chordate lineages. This subgroup of receptors plays an important role in the control of the complicated events of development and growth. Because of their early divergence, the mechanisms that involve these receptors appear to be very similar in the invertebrates as well as the vertebrates. There have been several international symposia (including both EMBO and Keystone symposia) that address the "form and function" or "the superfamily of nuclear receptors" in general, but until now there has been no systematic attempt to compare the similarities or differences of the form/function of nuclear receptors across phylogenetic lines. The symposium proposed here will bring together researchers working on these receptors and their ligands in a variety of vertebrates and invertebrates. Through this proposed symposium, the PI hopes to foster a broader discussion of the comparative structures of venous receptors, of the degree of post-transcriptional processing of gene products, and of the wide array of developmental and growth-related events that are controlled by this family of transcription factors.
