PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Christian E. Zimmerli
AU  - Matteo Allegretti
AU  - Vasileios Rantos
AU  - Sara K. Goetz
AU  - Agnieszka Obarska-Kosinska
AU  - Ievgeniia Zagoriy
AU  - Aliaksandr Halavatyi
AU  - Julia Mahamid
AU  - Jan Kosinski
AU  - Martin Beck
TI  - Nuclear pores constrict upon energy depletion
AID  - 10.1101/2020.07.30.228585
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.07.30.228585
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/31/2020.07.30.228585.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/31/2020.07.30.228585.full
AB  - Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) fuse the inner and outer nuclear membranes and mediate nucleocytoplasmic exchange. They are made of 30 different nucleoporins that form an intricate cylindrical architecture around an aqueous central channel. This architecture is highly dynamic in space and time. Variations in NPC diameter were reported, but the physiological circumstances and the molecular details remain unknown. Here we combined cryo-electron tomography and subtomogram averaging with integrative structural modeling to capture a molecular movie of the respective large-scale conformational changes in cellulo. While actively transporting NPCs adopt a dilated conformation, they strongly constrict upon cellular energy depletion. Fluorescence recovery after photo bleaching experiments show that NPC constriction is concomitant with reduced diffusion and active transport across the nuclear envelope. Our data point to a model where the energy status of cells is linked to the conformation of NPC architecture.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.