Mining for Pores

VacA pores as portable portals for urea.

Pores for thought: nuclear pore complex proteins.

Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) are enormous macromolecular structures that mediate the active exchange of proteins and RNPs between the nucleus and cytoplasm. Recent work has resulted in a windfall of identified NPC polypeptides, many with unique sequences. Several of the proteins have been shown to be part of extended cytoplasmic and nucleoplasmic NPC filaments. Biochemical, structural and gene...

Mining and Environmental Degradation: a Gift Brings Grief Scenario for Mining Communities in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is blessed with abundant natural resources but yet prone to environmental degradation due to the mining operations. Most often, the mining communities are faced with social tensions, as a result of the possible trade-off between the expected employment impact and the cost of mining operations to the environment. Over the past decades, the contribution of the mining sector to the de...

Glutamate receptor pores.

Glutamate receptors are ligand-gated ion channels that mediate fast excitatory synaptic transmission throughout the central nervous system. Functional receptors are homo- or heteromeric tetramers with each subunit contributing a re-entrant pore loop that dips into the membrane from the cytoplasmic side. The pore loops form a narrow constriction near their apex with a wide vestibule toward the c...

Opening closed pores

JCB • VOLUME 167 • NUMBER 6 • 2004 994 Opening closed pores closed mitosis may be less closed than was thought, based on results from Colin De Souza, Stephen Osmani, and colleagues (The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH). The authors find that a fungus opens nuclear pores during mitosis to permit diffusion into and out of the nucleus. Simple organisms may thus be viable model systems for the ...