Canonical and Noncanonical Mechanisms of Glucocorticoid Stress Hormones Action.

Hormones of stress, glucocorticoids, regulate numerous physiological processes and functions. These hormonal effects involve diverse mechanisms of action. Glucocorticoid receptors (GRs) are transcription factors which regulate gene expression by canonical mechanism of the hormone action through interaction with specific nucleotide sequence (GRE) in the regulatory region of the gene. The effects of the canonical mechanism develop for several hours. Non-genomic rapid effects of the hormone emerged in seconds- minuets and supposed to be associated with yet not identified receptor in the plasma membrane. In addition to these slow and rapid hormonal actions, one more slow non-canonical mechanism of glucocorticoid action become increasingly evident. This mechanism is based on protein-protein interactions of GRs with other transcription factors. The main modern concepts of canonical, non-canonical and membrane mechanisms of hormone action are discussed in the review.