TY - JOUR T1 - 3D super-resolution fluorescence microscopy maps the variable molecular architecture of the Nuclear Pore Complex JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2020.11.27.386599 SP - 2020.11.27.386599 AU - Vilma Jimenez Sabinina AU - M. Julius Hossain AU - Jean-Karim Hériché AU - Philipp Hoess AU - Bianca Nijmeijer AU - Shyamal Mosalaganti AU - Moritz Kueblbeck AU - Andrea Callegari AU - Anna Szymborska AU - Martin Beck AU - Jonas Ries AU - Jan Ellenberg Y1 - 2020/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/11/27/2020.11.27.386599.abstract N2 - Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) are large macromolecular machines that mediate the traffic between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. In vertebrates, each NPC consists of ∼1000 proteins, termed nucleoporins, and has a mass of over 100 MDa. While a pseudo-atomic static model of the central scaffold of the NPC has recently been assembled by integrating data from isolated proteins and complexes, many structural components still remain elusive due to the enormous size and flexibility of the NPC. Here, we explored the power of 3D super-resolution microscopy combined with computational classification and averaging to explore the 3D structure of the NPC in single human cells. We show that this approach can build the first integrated 3D structural map containing both central as well as peripheral NPC subunits with molecular specificity and nanoscale resolution. Our unbiased classification of over ten thousand individual NPCs indicates that the nuclear ring and the nuclear basket can adopt different conformations. Our approach opens up the exciting possibility to relate different structural states of the NPC to function in situ.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -