Time-resolved biophysical approaches to nucleocytoplasmic transport

Molecules are continuously shuttling across the nuclear envelope barrier that separates the nucleus from the cytoplasm. Instead of being just a barrier to diffusion, the nuclear envelope is rather a complex filter that provides eukaryotes with an elaborate spatiotemporal regulation of fundamental molecular processes, such as gene expression and protein translation. Given the highly dynamic nature of nucleocytoplasmic transport, during the past few decades large efforts were devoted to the development and application of time resolved, fluorescence-based, biophysical methods to capture the details of molecular motion across the nuclear envelope. These methods are here divided into three major classes, according to the differences in the way they report on the molecular process of nucleocytoplasmic transport. In detail, the first class encompasses those methods based on the perturbation of the fluorescence signal, also known as ensemble-averaging methods, which average the behavior of many molecules (across many pores). The second class comprises those methods based on the localization of single fluorescently-labelled molecules and tracking of their position in space and time, potentially across single pores. Finally, the third class encompasses methods based on the statistical analysis of spontaneous fluorescence fluctuations out of the equilibrium or stationary state of the system. In this case, the behavior of single molecules is probed in presence of many similarly-labelled molecules, without dwelling on any of them. Here these three classes, with their respective pros and cons as well as their main applications to nucleocytoplasmic shuttling will be briefly reviewed and discussed.