Evolution of the thyroid hormone, retinoic acid, ecdysone and liver X receptors

Ecdysone and thyroid hormone are 2 ligands that have important roles in regulating metamorphosis in animals. Ecdysone is a steroid that regulates molting in insects. Thyroid hormone regulates differentiation and development in fish and amphibia. Although ecdysone and thyroid hormone have different chemical structures, both hormones act by binding to transcription factors that belong to the nuclear receptor family. We investigated the evolution of structure and function in the ecdysone receptor (EcR) and thyroid hormone receptor (TR), and liver X receptor (LXR) and retinoic acid receptor (RAR), which cluster with EcR and TR, respectively (Bertrand S, Brunet FG, Escriva H, Parmentier G, Laudet V, Robinson-Rechavi M. 2004. Mol Biol Evol 21:1923-37), by constructing a multiple alignment of their sequences and calculating ancestral sequences for TR, RAR, EcR, and LXR. These alignments were mapped onto the 3D structures of TR, RAR, EcR, and LXR in the Protein Data Bank to examine the evolution of amino acids involved in the binding of ligands to TR, RAR, EcR, and LXR.