Abstract
Learning from Nature. Experiments of nature are crucial for informing scientific discovery. Twenty live years ago we began to investigate an outbreak of rachitic bone disease in adolescent, female New World primates residing at the Los Angles Zoo. Our investigation of this "experiment of nature" and that of an adolescent human female with a similar phenotype (Chen et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100:6109-6114, 2003) led us to the discovery of a novel means for relative resistance to vitamin D and estrogen in primates, including man. We coined these resistance-causing proteins as the vitamin D response element-binding protein (VDRE-BP) and estrogen response element-binding protein (ERE-BP) for their ability to compete in trans with the liganded vitamin D receptor and estrogen receptor a for their cognate response elements, identifying them as nucleic acid-binding proteins in the heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein C family (Chen et al., J Biol Chem 275:35557-35564. 2000; J Clin Invest 99:769-775, 1997). The purpose of this review is to examine the role of one of these proteins, the VDRE-BP, and other associated intracellular proteins that regulate the expression of vitamin D-controlled genes in nonhuman and human primates.
