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Hello, and welcome back.
Today I'm going to discuss hormones and
receptors.
My colleague Dr. St Leger is going to
discuss specific example
of Hormone receptor action, so I want to
introduce the concept.
The human body's composed of trillions of
cells, and
all of those cells need to communicate
with each other.
One of the ways they communicate through
chemical messengers such as hormones.
Hormones are released through the
endocrine system from an endocrine gland.
And hormones are transported
through your blood to target cells.
The target cell for a specific hormone
will have receptor,
which is a special protein that binds to
that specific hormone.
One specific type of hormone class or
steroid hormones.
Steroid hormones are useful as chemical
messenger, because
they are cheap, fast and easy to make.
Cholestors is the
[UNKNOWN]
to make steroid hormones, which is widely
available in your system.
When steroid hormones bind to the receptor
of this forms of
hormone receptor complex and this will be
transported in the nucleus itself.
And if you remember, the nucleus is where
the DNA is held.
The hormone-receptor complex will activate
gene expression.
Some examples of steroid hormones
are cortisol, estrogen, progesterone and
testosterone.
This is an example of direct gene
activation by steroid hormone action.
You'll probably remember gene expression
is regulated by promoters and activators.
And chemicals like hormones, that are
present in our
body, can affect gene expression by
interacting with these sequences.
If you're male, you'll make and
release testosterone and this testosterone
in early
development will direct your body, to make
primary sex characteristics associated
with being male.
Then at puberty, that testosterone will
direct gene

expression, so you can develop your

secondary sex characteristics.
Same idea in females, but with estrogen
and progesterone, which allows for
female-specific sex characteristics.
So, to summarize when an endocrine gland
makes and releases the steroid hormone,
that hormone will bind to specific cells
that have that specific hormone receptor.
Then that hormone receptor complex enters
the
nucleus and binds to a region called the
hormone response element.
And that can interact with an enhancer
sequence or another
regulatory sequence, such as the promoter
to increase gene expression.
Gene expression is increased because the
hormone
receptor complex activates gene
transcription and translation.
Many steroid hormones affect expression of
genes that are linked to cell growth.
You've probably heard of cortisol, it's
called the Stress hormone.
It's released when your under stress,
however you
probably never truly thought about what
stress is.
Stress can be something long term, such as
not
liking your living situation or constantly
being unhappy at work.
That's probably what you think about when
I say stress.
But other types of stress include just
getting out of bed in the morning.
Think about it, standing up in the cold
world is a
lot more stressful than being cuddled up
in your warm, soft blanket.
So what happens early in the morning to
prepare you for the day, is
your cortisol levels go up, which
increases
your blood pressure and your blood sugar
levels.
Cortisols an important hormone, because it
allows your cells
to communicate what's going on based on a
stimulus.
And that stimulus is stress.
Well, what about even more stressful
situations?
For instance, you're in the jungle and a
tiger's about to have you as a meal.
This leads the fight or flight response
and in that case
cortisol levels increase dramatically in
response to the super stressful situation.

But, so does adrenaline or epinephrine as

it's also called.
They work together to again increase your
sympathetic nervous system.
Which allows your body to respond to
that stimuli, by increasing blood sugar
levels dramatically.
Heart rate and blood pressure also
increased as well as
blood flow to your muscles so you can run
to safety.
The nervous system releases chemicals
that act in a similar fashion to endocrine
glands,
these chemicals from the nervous system
are called neurotransmitters.
Neurotransmitters can act like a hormone,
but they are released form cells in
your nervous system called neurons, and
neurotransmitters
communicate in the area called a synapse.
There are about 50 different chemicals
neurotransmitters.
So if you think about it, different
chemicals or different conversations
between brain, yourselves.
So with 50 different neurotransmitters,
you can
actually have 50 different conversations
in your
brain, and that's just looking at them
independently, not how they interact with
each other.
One famous neurotransmitter is seratonin,
and another is dopamine.
Dopamine is interesting.
Because it's linked to behaviors
associated with motivation and drive.
Dopamine release causes you to become
motivated.
Where serotonin is often
associated with removing stress, but it
also has many
roles that are kind of hard to pin down.
Serotonin not only affects your mood, but
it
affects things like the movement of your
GI tract.
That's the movement of food through your
intestines.
Some people have a disease called
Irritable
Bowel Syndrome, where they irregular GI
tract movements.
And so whenever they have a meal they go
to the
bathroom and people with this condition
say it's pretty painful and awkward.
So they always had these uncomfortable
bowel movements and

a lot of these people also suffer from

depression.
And you could argue that if after every
meal you are in
pain, that could lead to depression and it
would be a logical assumption.
Well, what researchers found is that
serotonin
regulates bowel movement, and it regulates
your mood.
Low levels of serotonin have been linked
to depression.
So when people were treated for their
irritable bowel syndrome with drugs
that slowed the breakdown of serotonin,
not only did it help
their GI tract movement, but it alleviated
the symptoms of depression.
There's an enzyme that regulates the level
of serotonin called monoamine oxidase A.
And an enzyme is a specialized type of
protein.
This enzyme, monoamine oxidase A, has been
associated with behavior.
Certain people have an allele called the
warrior gene.
That's a version of the monoamine
oxidase A gene, and when this allele
is coupled with abusive experiences during
early childhood.
It's been, it's been correlated to violent
behavior in an adult.
Dr. Senhedger will discuss this more
later.
So to summarize, the cells of our body
need to communicate.
They coordinate their activities, or our
cells communicate chemically.
And there's two types of chemical classes
that we've talked about.
Hormones and I gave you examples of
cortisol,
testosterone, progesterone and estrogen.
And the other class of chemical messengers
were neurotransmitters,
and I gave you the examples of zopamine
and serotonin.
Chemicals can affect gene expression and
ultimately will affect your philiology and
behavior.
And remember, remember our behavior, such
as running from that
tiger in the jungle, effect your chance of
survival and your chance of
biological success.
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