Apr 14, 2026 · 23 min · 9 segments
At the center of little holes in cell nuclei is a mystery. Here, clumps of proteins wiggle disordered tails around like seaweed. They drive a molecular machine that moves countless molecules in and…
Yasemin SaplakogluGuestSamir PatelHostSo we have these disordered proteins forming a ring around the transport channel.
That by itself doesn't make that gate in any way selective to allow certain molecules in and certain molecules out.
And I presume with increasing microscopy technology, we're starting to get a better picture of what's actually happening in here.
People have been using various techniques to try to figure out what's going on in there, and there has been some debate as to what it looks like inside the channel and how these intrinsically disordered proteins are interacting with each other to create this incredible selectivity.
So there's some debate about... what the inner portion of this nuclear pore looks like.
So people have been trying to model and use a variety of different microscopy techniques and ideas to come up with theories for what it might look like, which directly impacts how the molecules would be moving through or getting bounced out and not allowed
There were a couple of sort of teams that formed around certain ideas, and some people thought it looked more like a gel in there, a little bit more rigid, where the nuclear proteins would snap onto one another and form this mesh-like network.
But then others argued that the disordered proteins, they don't interact well.
with each other so much in the sense of like they're forming any kind of more static mesh network.
So one says these things are kind of knitting together and making a gel-like substance there.
So we have these disordered proteins forming a ring around the transport channel.
That by itself doesn't make that gate in any way selective to allow certain molecules in and certain molecules out.
And I presume with increasing microscopy technology, we're starting to get a better picture of what's actually happening in here.
People have been using various techniques to try to figure out what's going on in there, and there has been some debate as to what it looks like inside the channel and how these intrinsically disordered proteins are interacting with each other to create this incredible selectivity.
So there's some debate about... what the inner portion of this nuclear pore looks like.
So people have been trying to model and use a variety of different microscopy techniques and ideas to come up with theories for what it might look like, which directly impacts how the molecules would be moving through or getting bounced out and not allowed
There were a couple of sort of teams that formed around certain ideas, and some people thought it looked more like a gel in there, a little bit more rigid, where the nuclear proteins would snap onto one another and form this mesh-like network.
But then others argued that the disordered proteins, they don't interact well.
with each other so much in the sense of like they're forming any kind of more static mesh network.
So one says these things are kind of knitting together and making a gel-like substance there.
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3 of 6
When Pores Become Disease Targets
These cellular gateways may help explain disease
Scientists See the Pore's Central Plug
Scientists finally captured the pore's hidden choreography
The Molecular Bouncer Inside Cells
Transport proteins carry cargo while repelling intruders
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