The hormonal response of estrogen receptors (ER) ␣ and ER is controlled by a number of cofactors, including the general transcriptional coactivator CREB-binding protein (CBP).Growing evidence suggests that specific kinase signaling events also modulate the formation and activity of the ER coactivation complex. Here we show that ER activity and target gene expression are decreased upon activation of ErbB2/ErbB3 receptors despite the presence of CBP. This inhibition of ER involved activation of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt pathway, abrogating the potential of CBP to facilitate ER response to estrogen. Such reduced activity was associated with an impaired ability of ER to recruit CBP upon activation of Akt. Mutation of serine 255, an Akt consensus site contained in the hinge region of ER, prevented the release of CBP and rendered ER transcriptionally more responsive to CBP coactivation, suggesting that Ser-255 may serve as a regulatory site to restrain ER activity in Akt-activated cells. In contrast, we found that CBP intrinsic activity was increased by Akt through threonine 1872, a consensus site for Akt in the cysteine-and histidine-rich 3 domain of CBP, indicating that such enhanced transcriptional potential of CBP did not serve to activate ER. Interestingly, nuclear receptors sharing a conserved Akt consensus site with ER also exhibit a reduced ability to be coactivated by CBP, whereas others missing that site were able to benefit from the activation of CBP by Akt. These results therefore outline a regulatory mechanism by which the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/ Akt pathway may discriminate nuclear receptor response through coactivator transcriptional competence.Estrogen mediates many aspects in growth, development, and reproduction, through its interaction with estrogen receptors ER 2 ␣ and ER. Although encoded by unique genes, the two ERs share the functional domains characteristic of the nuclear hormone receptor family (1). These consist of an N-terminal region (also termed AB region), which confers ligandindependent activation of ERs through its activation function (AF)-1, a highly conserved DNA-binding domain (C) that allows specific binding to genomic response elements, a flexible hinge region (D) that includes signals for nuclear localization and the binding of heat shock proteins, and finally a C-terminal region (EF) that contains the ligand binding domain, and the AF-2 function that mediates hormone-dependent activation. Increasing evidence suggests that, beside hormonal activation, ER function can be modulated by phosphorylation-dependent mechanisms, involving a wide variety of protein kinases that mostly target the AF-1 domain (2, 3). In particular, direct phosphorylation of ER␣ AF-1 by MAPK/ERK in response to EGF was shown to induce ER␣ transactivation in the absence of ligand (4, 5). Similarly, phosphorylation of Ser-167 by pp90 RSK1 was described to promote ER␣ AF-1 activity (6). Activation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) and Akt/protein kinase B also contributed to pho...