Abstract
Hormones are important bioactive molecules that regulate the development, function, and homeostasis of tissues/organs via binding to hormone receptors (HRs) in target cells. Although human HRs are essential for both basic research and drug development, a comprehensive analysis of them is still lacking. Here, we present a systematic bioinformatic investigation of all known human HRs, characterizing their genomic distributions, biological functions, subcellular localizations, and expression patterns in various cell types and tissues/organs. We further explored the relationship between HR expression and aging, and identified HRs with aging-associated expression changes. In addition, a thorough analysis of HR-related diseases highlights the extensive involvement of HRs in various pathological conditions, particularly nervous system diseases and cancers. We constructed gender-specific cross-tissue/organ hormone-HR interaction networks, which provided valuable insights into hormone-mediated inter-organ communications. An interactive website was also developed to allow users to explore hormone-HR networks in different tissues/organs. These results revealed new features of human HRs and offered a comprehensive resource for human HR-related studies.
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Code availability and interactive website access
The bioinformatic analysis codes developed for this study are publicly available on GitHub at https://github.com/CadenZhao/HR-analysis. Additionally, the interactive website for visualizing hormone-mediated inter-organ communication based on hormone-receptor interactions, named Human Organ Hormonal Communications (HOHC), is hosted by the Shinyapps.io server and can be accessed at https://omicsexplorer.shinyapps.io/HOHC/. The source code for developing the HOHC website is also available on GitHub at https://github.com/CadenZhao/HOHC.
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Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences for Young Scientists in Basic Research Project (YSBR-073), Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission (Z231100007223010), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2023YFC3402202), Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA0460203), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91940304).
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Zhao, X., Wang, XJ. A systematic analysis of human hormone receptors. Sci. China Life Sci. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-024-2950-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-024-2950-4