A member of the chicken RXR family of nuclear receptors activates transcription in response to retinoic acid

The chicken cRXR nuclear receptor is a member of the steroid/thyroid hormone receptor superfamily. In this paper we show that cRXR can transactivate gene expression in response to retinoic acid, but that its sensitivity to retinoic acid is lower than that of the hRAR-beta receptor. We have also compared the ability of cRXR and hRAR-beta to respond to a panel of other retinoids. Unlike hRAR-beta, cRXR failed to respond to the naturally occurring retinoid 3,4-didehydro-retinoic acid or to the synthetic retinoid TTNPB, both of which share the ability of retinoic acid to induce digit duplications when locally applied to chick limb buds.