Overlapping nuclear import and export paths unveiled by two-colour MINFLUX

Abhishek Sau, Sebastian Schnorrenberg, Ziqiang Huang, Debolina Bandyopadhyay, Ankith Sharma, Clara-Marie Gürth, Sandeep Dave and Siegfried M. Musser ()
Additional contact information
Abhishek Sau: Texas A&M University
Sebastian Schnorrenberg: European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Ziqiang Huang: European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Debolina Bandyopadhyay: Texas A&M University
Ankith Sharma: Texas A&M University
Clara-Marie Gürth: Abberior Instruments GMBH
Sandeep Dave: Texas A&M University
Siegfried M. Musser: Texas A&M University

Nature, 2025, vol. 640, issue 8059, 821-827

Abstract: Abstract The nuclear pore complex (NPC) mediates nucleocytoplasmic exchange, catalysing a massive flux of protein and nucleic acid material in both directions1. Distinct trafficking pathways for import and export would be an elegant solution to avoid unproductive collisions and opposing movements. However, the three-dimensional (3D) nanoscale spatiotemporal dynamics of macromolecules traversing the NPC remains challenging to visualize on the timescale of millisecond-scale transport events. Here we used 3D MINFLUX2 to identify the nuclear pore scaffold and then to simultaneously monitor both nuclear import and nuclear export, thereby establishing that both transport processes occur in overlapping regions of the central pore. Whereas translocation-arrested import complexes bound at the pore periphery, tracks of translocating complexes within the central pore region revealed a preference for an approximately 40- to 50-nm diameter annulus with minimal circumferential movement, indicating activity-dependent confinement within the permeability barrier. Movement within the pore was approximately 1,000-fold slower than in solution and was interspersed with pauses, indicating a highly restricted environment with structural constraints and/or transient binding events during transport. These results demonstrate that high spatiotemporal precision with reduced photobleaching is a major advantage of MINFLUX tracking, and that the NPC permeability barrier is divided into annular rings with distinct functional properties.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08738-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:640:y:2025:i:8059:d:10.1038_s41586-025-08738-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08738-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().