An important function of steroidogenic cytochromes P450 is the transformation of cholesterol to produce androgens, estrogens, and the corticosteroids. The activities of cytochrome P450c17 (CYP17) are essential in sex hormone biosynthesis, with severe developmental defects being a consequence of deficiency or mutations. The first reaction catalyzed by this multifunctional P450 is the 17α-hydroxy...

Breast development, one of the first signs of puberty, is closely associated with age at menarche; and early menarche is in turn a well-established risk factor for female breast cancer. We examined the relationships between the onset of puberty and gene variants for certain enzymes that regulate hormone metabolism among 137 healthy nine-year-old girls from two pediatric clinics. High-activity C...

Congenital adrenal hyperplasia is a disorder occurring in both sexes and is the commonest cause of ambiguous genitalia. It is a group of autosomal recessive disorders in which, on the basis of an enzyme defect the bulk of steroid hormone production by adrenal cortex shifts from corticosteroids to androgens. Autosomal recessive mutations in the CYP21, CYP17, CYP11B1 and 3betaHSD genes that encod...

Exposure to poor maternal nutrition around the time of conception results in an early prepartum activation of the fetal pituitary-adrenal axis and in increased adrenal growth and stress response after birth associated with epigenetic changes in a differentially methylated region (DMR) of adrenal IGF2/H19. We have determined the effects of maternal undernutrition during the periconceptional peri...

The mammalian Pbx homeodomain proteins provide specificity and increased DNA binding affinity to other homeodomain proteins. A cAMP-responsive sequence (CRS1) from bovine CYP17 has previously been shown to be a binding site for Pbx1. A member of a second mammalian homeodomain family, Meis1, is now also demonstrated to be a CRS1-binding protein upon purification using CRS1 affinity chromatograph...

Since 2010, six drugs have been approved for the treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer, i.e., CYP17 inhibitor Abiraterone, androgen receptor antagonist Enzalutamide, cytotoxic agent Cabazitaxel, vaccine Sipuleucel-T, antibody Denosumab against receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa B ligand and radiopharmaceutical Alpharadin. All these drugs demonstrate improvement on overall su...

Sterility is a serious problem that can affect all bionts. In teleosts, double haploids (DHs) induced by mitogynogenesis are often sterile. This sterility severely restricts the further application of DHs for production of clones, genetic analysis, and breeding. However, sterile DH individuals are good source materials for investigation of the molecular mechanisms of gonad development, especial...

Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and brominated dioxins are emerging persistent organic pollutants that are ubiquitous in the environment and can be accumulated by wildlife and humans. These chemicals can disturb endocrine function. Recent studies have demonstrated that one of the mechanisms of endocrine disruption by chemicals is modulation of steroidogenic gene expression or enzyme activiti...

Variation in age at menarche (AAM) is known to be substantially influenced by genetic factors, but the true causal genes remain largely unidentified. Because the increased amplitude of estrogen exposure of tissues initiates the onset of menarche, the genes involved in estrogen biosynthesis are natural candidate genes underlying AAM. Our study aimed to identify whether the CYP17 and CYP19, the t...