Nuclear pore basket - octopus-like arms unveiled

The nuclear pore basket is a filamentous structure attached to the nucleoplasmic side of the nuclear pore complex (NPC), crucial for regulating transport between the nucleus and cytoplasm. In a paper published in Nature Cell Biology, Edvinas Stankunas and Alwin Köhler revealed the structural basis of the basket filaments and their docking mechanism to the main body of the NPC. They explain how the basket can dynamically change its shape, much like the arms of an octopus, to accommodate transport needs, offering new insights into its flexibility and functional plasticity.