Recent Studies on the Mechanism of Action of Testosterone

IN considering how a steroid such as testosterone (17β-hydroxyandrost-4-en-3-one) exerts its diverse effects, a variety of questions can be posed. The first relates to the molecular mechanisms by which the hormone promotes differentiation, growth or function of specific tissues. It is disappointing that nearly a decade after the demonstration of the intranuclear binding of the hormone within target cells and the elucidation of the thesis that testosterone, like other steroid hormones, acts in the nucleus to promote transcription or effective translation of stored genetic information (or both), it is unclear how such binding regulates the genetic machinery. A second problem.