Beyond zinc fingers: steroid hormone receptors have a novel structural motif for DNA recognition.

The highly conserved DNA-binding domain of the steroid hormone receptors contains two 'zinc finger'-like sequence motifs. The three-dimensional structure in solution has been determined using two-dimensional 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and shows that the two 'zinc finger'-like motifs fold to form a single structural domain. The combination of this structural information and mutagenesis data reveals how this family of transcriptional regulators bind to DNA.