The mechanism of a nuclear pore assembly: a molecular biophysics view

Holes in the Nuclear Membrane as an Illustration of Gaps in the Understanding of the Biology by Biologists

At the moment, the conditions are in place to describe how to construct nuclear pores and how they work, missing only real understanding of process. The DNA-RNA-protein paradigm proposed by Crick 53 years ago (Symp Soc Exp Biol 12:138-163, 1958; Nature 227:561-563, 1970) severely hampers our understanding of nuclear pore structure and assembly because the problem lies outside paradigm. DNA in this scheme only plays the role of information storage from which information is transferred to RNA, then from RNA to proteins after which proteins perform all of the functions in the cell. Although it is known that DNA is able to build nucleosomes in vivo, many in vitro structures types of origami (Rothemund, Nature 440:297-302, 2006), the DNA is considered to be exotic as structural material for cells. The structural role of RNA is difficult to ignore, in connections with their participation in structures of ribosomes, ribonucleoproteins, and ribozymes, but imagine that DNA performs an important structural role in the cell is impossible in opinion of many authors. So, when there was a problem in explaining the origin of the nuclear pore, all efforts of biologists were directed to proteins such as nucleoporins, especially when taking into account that there are 30 nucleoporins and only one DNA. Here, I try to explain the typical mistakes of the old approach to such a complex problem as nuclear pore structure and assembly.

Isolation of chromatin DNA tightly bound to the nuclear envelope of HeLa cells

Recent discovery of the role of nuclear pores in transcription, predicted by our early DNA-membrane complex (DMC) model, makes membrane-bound DNA (MBD) isolation from the cell nucleus and analysis of the MBD actual. The method of MBD isolation proposed by us retains DMC integrity during isolation. We used HeLa cells for DMC extraction. Changing the ionic composition of the isolation medium and replacing DNase I, used commonly for chromatin destruction, with a set of restriction enzymes allowed us to isolate the MBD. Treatment of a nuclear membrane with proteinase K and ultrasound has been used to increase the yield of MBD. Electron microscopic analysis of the purified fraction of isolated DMC supports our previous model of nuclear envelope lipid-chromatin interaction in the nuclear pore assembly.