Swiss researchers have discovered how the cell nucleus is correctly positioned for cell division, between mother and budding daughter cell. According to a press release, this discovery was made in a collaboration between Michel Steinmetz and his research group at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and Yves Barral, Professor of Biochemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), as well as two other groups at ETH. Its study was published in the scientific journal Nature Cell Biology.
As the PSI demonstrated in a video, hollow tubes called microtubules, motor proteins and an actin cable play a key role in this process. The actin cable is a ring anchored in the cell membrane of the emerging daughter cell. One end of the microtubule must connect to the cell nucleus and its other tip recruits a motor protein, which grabs an actin cable. This motor protein then walks along the actin cable, pulling the microtubule into the daughter cell until its cargo reaches its intended destination between the two cells.
As the teams have now learned after years of research, three proteins enable the microtubule to stay attached to the motor protein and actin cable. “It is not just a glue, but it is a smart glue, which is able to integrate spatial information to form only at the right place,” explained Yves Barral.
Within the complex tangle of identical microtubules in the cell cytoplasm, just one microtubule receives the droplet that enables it to attach to the actin cable and pull the genetic information into place. How nature manages to assemble “a complex structure on the end of just one microtubule, and not others, is mindboggling,” Barral emphasizes. He believes this discovery is “just the beginning of a new understanding of the role smart liquids play in the cell”. mm
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