June 11, 2010

Nuclear Pores Use Different Assembly Mechanisms At Different Stages

Nuclear pores are the primary gatekeepers mediating communication between a cell's nucleus and its cytoplasm. Recently these large multiprotein transport channels have also been shown to play an essential role in developmental gene regulation. Despite the critical role in nuclear function, however, nuclear pore complexes remain somewhat shadowy figures, with many details about their formation shrouded in mystery.



But, explains Martin Hetzer, Ph.D., Hearst Endowment associate professor in Salk's Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory, who led the study, there has been a longstanding question about whether assembly pathways at the distinct cell cycle stages use different or similar mechanisms. "Interphase assembly is different from post-mitotic assembly in that the nuclear membrane is fully formed around chromatin," he says, "whereas post-mitotic assembly occurs into the reforming nuclear membrane. So the topology of the nuclear membrane is very different during these two cell cycle stages."



The team identified a key difference in how the Nup107/160 complex, which is essential for NPC formation, is targeted to new assembly sites in the NE. Surprisingly, one of the complex members, Nup133, is directed to the pore assembly site via a completely novel mechanism that involves sensing of the nuclear membrane's curvature. "The sensor was identified in a bioinformatics screen, and it was not known whether it was really functional in vivo," says co-first author Christine Doucet, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Hetzer's lab. "But we thought it would fit in with the topology of the nuclear membrane and the sites of the new nuclear pore complexes because they are highly curved. So if the sensor was playing a role in assembly, it was a really neat way to coordinate the assembly of all the components at the right position and the right time."


"We knew both proteins were essential for pore assembly in different ways, but we didn't know how," says co-first author Jessica Talamas, also a postdoctoral fellow in Hetzer's lab. "There was a discrepancy in the literature about POM121, so we were trying to figure out what was going on. It was one of those lightbulb moments, we were looking at the data and realized that POM121 was only required for interphase assembly, and then everything just made sense."


"In establishing differences between the two assembly pathways, the findings have provided the first glimpse of a mechanistic understanding," Hetzer says.



Image Caption: Nuclear pores, the all-important channels that control the flow of information in and out of a cell's nucleus, assemble during interphase, and following mitosis, when the nuclear membrane reforms around the segregated chromosomes to create two identical nuclei. The image above shows fully assembled nuclear pores in red and early nuclear pore intermediates in green. Credit: Image: Courtesy of Dr. Jessica Talamas, Salk Institute for Biological Studies.


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