Nuclear order out of chaos

摘要

How cells build their internal structures remains one of the central mysteries in cell biology. If the cell nucleus is anything to go by, stochastic assembly and self-organization seem to be key. As anyone knows who has ever put together one of those home-assembly bookshelves, most man-made structures can only be built by following a defined sequence of steps. It is difficult to set aside this preconceived notion of linear assembly when thinking about how cellular structures emerge. Yet a landmark paper by Kaiser, Intine and Dundr, published in Science, makes a powerful case for the formation of biological structures by apparently random pathways and self-organization.