Structure of a nuclear pore complex of a human cell
The walls of a cell nucleus are perforated with thousands of gates, called nuclear pores, which ensure the transport of molecules carrying genetic information and other ‘valuables’ in and out of the nucleus. This image shows one of these gates, which contain more than 1,000 building blocks. The compartment’s walls are in grey, and the gate’s building blocks are represented in various colors. Visualization was done by Jan Kosinski at EMBL Heidelberg.