Vertebrate sex steroid receptors: evolution, ligands, and neurodistribution

This minireview focuses on our current understanding of vertebrate sex steroid receptors, with an emphasis on their evolutionary relationships. These relationships are discussed based on nucleotide and amino acid sequence data, which provides clues to the process by which structure–function relations have originated and evolved and been maintained over time. The importance of the distribution of sex steroid receptors in the vertebrate brain is discussed using the example of androgen receptor sites and their relatively conserved localizations in the vertebrate brain.