Breaking the cycle: An insight into the role of ERα in eukaryotic cell cycles

There have been numerous reviews written to date on estrogen receptor (ER), focusing on topics such as its role in the etiology of breast cancer, its mode of regulation, its role as a transcriptional activator and how to target it therapeutically, just to name a few. One reason for so much attention on this nuclear receptor is that it acts not only as a prognostic marker, but also as a target for therapy. However, a relatively undiscovered area in the literature regarding ER is how its activity in the presence and absence of ligand affects its role in proliferation and cell cycle transition. In this review, we provide a brief overview of ER signaling, ligand dependent and independent, genomic and non-genomic, and how these signaling events affect the role of ER in the mammalian cell cycle.