BMC Genomics. 2013;14 Suppl 6(Suppl 6):S1. doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-14-S6-S1. Epub 2013 Oct 25.
Nuclear receptors (NRs) are transcription factors which bind small hormones, whose evolutionary history and the presence of different functional surfaces makes them an interesting target for a correlation based analysis.
Correlation analysis of ligand binding domains shows that correlated residue subsets arise from the differences between functional sites in different nuclear receptor subfamilies. For the DNA binding domain, particularly, the analysis shows that the main source of correlation comes from residues that regulate hormone response element specificity, and one of the conserved residue sub-sets arises due to the presence of an unusual sequence for the DNA binding motif known as P-box in nematodes, suggesting the existence of different DBD-DNA specificities in nuclear receptors.
We conclude that DNA specificity and functional surface specialization has independently driven nuclear receptor evolution, and suggest possible binding modes for the class of divergent nuclear receptors in nematodes.
核受体（NRs）是转录因子，能与小分子激素结合，其进化历史和不同功能表面的存在，使它们成为基于相关性分析的有趣目标。
配体结合结构域的相关性分析表明，相关残基子集源于不同核受体亚家族功能部位之间的差异。对于 DNA 结合结构域，特别是分析表明，相关性的主要来源来自于调节激素反应元件特异性的残基，而由于存在称为线虫 P 盒的不寻常 DNA 结合基序序列，一个保守残基子集出现，这表明核受体中存在不同的 DBD-DNA 特异性。
我们得出结论，DNA 特异性和功能表面特化独立地推动了核受体的进化，并为线虫中这一类具有差异的核受体提出了可能的结合模式。
