Researchers at the Institut Pasteur Korea, in collaboration with their colleagues in France, have performed ground breaking work deciphering basic cell function surrounding genetic information.

Employing advanced microscopy technology in collaboration with imaging tools they have been able to follow genes in living cells throughout a genetic activation event. They found that when genes become active, they decrease their movement, and become tethered to the periphery of the nucleus, where nuclear pore complexes yield export sites for the newly synthesized mRNA. In other words, genes are `gated` an event that was first hypothesized by the Nobel Laureate Guenter Blobel 20 years ago.


Further, the research team has been able to identify the molecular players that mediate the change in the spatial positioning of activated genes. These factors, they found, are in large parts identical to proteins that were previously known for their role in gene activation. The regulation of genes is thus intricately connected to changes in its spatial positioning within the nucleus.

Together with an accompanying paper from the University of Geneva the work shows, that regulation of genes depends not only from a specific DNA sequence, upon which the coordinated action of factors is exerted. Rather, genetic information is being encoded and decoded to an obviously large part as a function of the 3-dimensional nuclear space that surrounds genes. Spatial organization thus gains a regulatory role. Space encodes information. In addition to the linear DNA code, nuclear architecture and space thus become an integrated level of information, required to pass on and edit hereditary and functional information. In the end it may not be surprising: Obviously cell are 3 dimensional, and during evolution they have learned to encode information in space.

In consequence researchers have to have a much closer look at nuclear organization. The use of spatial/architectural information would explain, why in so many hereditary diseases, such as dystrophies, ALS etc., the nuclear envelope integrity is compromised. Also, in most cancers cells do reveal cross distortions of nuclear shape and integrity. With the information of the current two publications in nature, these architectural distortions may no longer just be a consequence of malignant deregulation of cell growth, they may be the cause.