Single-molecule Structural and Functional Analyses of Nuclear Pore Complex

Macromolecular traffic between the nucleoplasm and the cytoplasm is governed by the mechanisms of interaction between cargo molecules and the nuclear pore complex (NPC). In the last decade, many of the molecular components of the NPC have been identified and considerable insights into the structure and the biological functions of the NPC have been obtained. However, the detailed molecular mechanism of the transport event still remains unaddressed. By combining atomic force microscopy (AFM), fluorescence observation technique, and molecular and cellular biology, we established a system to investigate the molecular mechanism of the nuclear transport at the single-molecule level