The endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can affect transcriptional activities via influencing estrogen receptors(ER) signaling pathway. This review focus on the mechanism about effect of EDCs on ERs signal pathway.The characteristic and signal pathway of the two estrogen receptors (ERs), ERα and ERβ, were firstly expatiated. The effect of EDCs on ER signaling pathways are consist of the ligand-dependent and non-ligand-dependent pathway, and the ligand-dependent pathways include the modes of direct and indirect action. The direct action of EDCs can change the transcriptional activity of ER through the competive binding between EDCs as ligand and estragen to the same site.The indirect action is mainly regarded that the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) can be activated by EDCs as ligand, then AhR makes ERs being ubiquitinated and degradated, or competitive binding the co-activator with ER or direct disrupting the DNA transcription. The mechanisms of EDCs disrupting the internal secretion involving non-ligand-dependent and non- gene pathway are not clear. This review prompted that the research on EDCs′s effect should be paid more attention to exploring the mechanism about multi signals pathways in future.

endocrine disruptive chemicals; estrogen receptor; signal transduction