| description: |
Sex hormones have various physiological functions in several tissues besides their important role in reproductive tract. 17beta-estradiol, progesterone and testosterone can act via genomic and nongenomic pathway. As genomic effects at intracellular receptors are well characterised, nongenomic responses mediated by membrane sites are studied only in the last few years and no such receptors have been isolated or cloned so far.In this project nongenomic responses to 17beta-estradiol, progesterone and testosterone will be studied in human erythrocytes, non-nucleated cells where genomic pathway of steroids can be excluded. Dependence of life-span of erythrocytes on level of sex hormones is well known. In this project direct coupling of sex hormones on erythrocyte membranes as well as involvement of different second messenger cascades in signal transduction will be analysed. The nature of such hormonal sites will be further studied by immunoanalyses. When regulatory aspects of sex-hormone-specific membrane sites in normal cell populations will be cleaned next step of investigations is to establish the role of such hormonal receptors in different red cell pathologies. Also, involvement of these receptors in maturation of erythrocytes will be analysed.This project is expected to have an important scientific impact being the first study of direct effects of sex hormones on membrane sites of erythrocytes. The results will help better to understand possible side effects of hormone replacement therapy as well as hormone therapy used for treatment of several malignancies. Moreover, this project may open new possibilities for therapy of some red cell pathologies by using endocrine treatment. |