Nuclear Membrane Protein Sieve

摘要

En route from the outer membrane to the inner membrane of the nuclear envelope, nuclear membrane proteins must pass through the nuclear pore complex. Meinema et al. (p. 90, published online 9 June; see the Perspective by Kriwacki and Yoon) found that a natively unfolded linker that spaces the transmembrane domain and the nuclear localization signal, reaches out from the membrane to the central channel of the nuclear pore. During transport, the unfolded linker appears to "slice" through the nuclear pore complex scaffold, allowing the nuclear pore complex to act as a selective gate that regulates intranuclear levels of membrane proteins.