Nucleocytoplasmic transport: a thermodynamic mechanism

The nuclear pore supports molecular communication between cytoplasm and nucleus in eukaryotic cells. Selective transport of proteins is mediated by soluble receptors, whose regulation by the small GTPase Ran leads to cargo accumulation in, or depletion from the nucleus, i.e., nuclear import or nuclear export. We consider the operation of this transport system by a combined analytical and experimental approach. Provocative predictions of a simple model were tested using cell-free nuclei reconstituted in Xenopus egg extract, a system well suited to quantitative studies. We found that accumulation capacity is limited, so that introduction of one import cargo leads to egress of another. Clearly, the pore per se does not determine transport directionality. Moreover, different cargo reach a similar ratio of nuclear to cytoplasmic concentration in steady-state. The model shows that this ratio should in fact be independent of the receptor-cargo affinity, though kinetics may be strongly influenced. Numerical conservation of the system components highlights a conflict between the observations and the popular concept of transport cycles. We suggest that chemical partitioning provides a framework to understand the capacity to generate concentration gradients by equilibration of the receptor-cargo intermediary.Comment: in press at HFSP Journal, vol 3 16 text pages, 1 table, 4 figures, plus Supplementary Material include

A protocol for studying the kinetics of RNA within cultured cells: application to ribosomal RNA.

peer reviewedThis protocol describes a nonisotopic method for high-resolution investigation of the kinetics of RNA within the cell. This involves the incorporation of bromouridine-5'-triphosphate into RNA of living cells by lipofection followed by immunocytological detection of BrRNAs. The use of the same antibody identified either with fluorescence or with gold particles revealed the three-dimensional organization of sites containing labeled RNAs or their precise localization by using confocal and ultrastructural microscopy, respectively. Comparison of three-dimensional reconstruction obtained from the series of optical sections and ultrathin sections was extremely fruitful to describe topological and spatial dynamics of RNAs from their synthesis site inside the nucleus to the cytoplasm. Combined with immunolocalization of proteins involved in different nuclear activities and with highly resolved three-dimensional visualizations of the labelings, this method should also provide a significant contribution to our understanding of the functional, volumic organization of the cell nucleus. The entire protocol can be completed in approximately 10 d

Mapping the orientation of nuclear pore proteins in living cells with polarized fluorescence microscopy

The nuclear pore complex (NPC) perforates the nuclear envelope to facilitate selective transport between nucleus and cytoplasm. The NPC is composed of multiple copies of ~30 different proteins, termed nucleoporins, whose arrangement within the NPC is a major unsolved puzzle in structural biology. Various alternative models for NPC architecture have been proposed but not tested experimentally in intact NPCs. We present a method using polarized fluorescence microscopy to investigate nucleoporin orientation in live yeast and mammalian cells. Our results support an arrangement of both yeast Nic96 and human Nup133–Nup107 with their long axes approximately parallel to the nuclear envelope plane. This method can complement X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy to generate a high-resolution map of the entire NPC, and could monitor nucleoporin rearrangements during nucleocytoplasmic transport and NPC assembly. This strategy can also be adapted for other macromolecular machines