Netherlands Proteomics Centre (NPC) project leader Liesbeth Veenhoff and her colleagues have exposed a new shortcut by which membrane proteins are guided to the inner nuclear membrane. Unlike in the method known hitherto, the protein’s ‘address code’ is found to be attached to a long string that wriggles, as it were, through the membrane pore.
The Groningen researchers studied how particular membrane proteins find their way to the right place in a cell. The cell nucleus and the nuclear pore complexes are present in all plant, animal and human cells, and their function is vital to life: if they malfunction, the cell dies. Fundamental research of this kind is an investment in the future and in this particular case will probably have applications in medicine
This discovery was published online in the journal Science on 9 June 2011.
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