Comparative analysis of nuclear estrogen receptor alpha and beta interactomes in breast cancer cells

Estrogen Receptor alpha and beta (ER-alpha and -beta) are members of the nuclear receptor family of transcriptional regulators with distinct roles in mediating estrogen dependent breast cancer cell growth and differentiation. Following activation by the hormone, these proteins undergo conformation changes and accumulate in the nucleus, where they bind to chromatin at regulatory sites as homo- and/or heterodimers and assemble in large multiprotein complexes. Although the two ERs share a conserved structure, they exert specific and distinct functional roles in normal and transformed mammary epithelial cells and other cell types. To investigate the molecular bases of such differences, we performed a comparative computational analysis of the nuclear interactomes of the two ER subtypes, exploiting two datasets of receptor interacting proteins identified in breast cancer cell nuclei by Tandem Affinity Purification for their ability to associate in vivo with ligand-activated ER-alpha and/or ER-beta. These datasets comprise 498 proteins, of which only 70 are common to both ERs, suggesting that differences in the nature of the two ER interactomes are likely to sustain the distinct roles of the two receptor subtypes. Functional characterization of the two interactomes and their topological analysis, considering node degree and closeness of the networks, confirmed this possibility. Indeed, clustering and network dissection highlighted the presence of distinct and ER subtype-specific subnetworks endowed with defined functions. Altogether, these data provide new insights on the protein-protein interaction networks controlled by ER-alpha and -beta that mediate their ability to transduce estrogen signaling in breast cancer cells.