Cellular Logistics

Transport processes between nucleus and cytoplasm

Press releases & research news

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Lasker Award 2025 for Dirk Görlich

September 11, 2025

The Lasker Foundation honors Dirk Görlich and the US-American Steven McKnight for “discoveries that exposed the structures and functions of protein sequences of low complexity, revealing new principles of intracellular transport and cellular organization”, the foundation announced. The prize is widely regarded as America’s preeminent biomedical research award and endowed with 250,000 US dollars. more

Cryo-electron tomography image: The viral membrane is studded with proteins including glycoprotein B that are the key for host cell infection.

A nanobody against herpes

September 03, 2025

More than 40 million people worldwide are infected with the herpes virus every year. The virus can pose a serious threat to newborns and people with weakened immune systems. Researchers in Hamburg and Göttingen have now generated a mini-antibody that neutralizes a protein essential for the infection. more

Yearbook Article (2009)

Logistics on smallest possible space: Transport processes between cell nucleus and cytoplasm
The cell nucleus is enclosed by the nuclear envelope, lacks protein synthesis and therefore imports each and every protein from the cytosol. Conversely, the nucleus supplies the cytoplasm with nuclear products, such as ribosomes, tRNAs and mRNAs. The permeability barrier of nuclear pore complexes controls all this exchange. This permeability barrier is an "intelligent" hydrogel with truly remarkable properties. It excludes inert macromolecules, but permits an up to 20,000-fold faster entry of cargoes, when these are bound to appropriate nuclear transport receptors. (in German) more