Structural Morphology Changes of the Nuclear Pore Complex at Nano-Scale Through Computational Vibration Model

The nuclear pore complex (NPC) controls the transport of all cellular material between the cytoplasm and the nucleus that occurs naturally in biological cells of many organisms including yeast, vertebrate and others. In order to understand NPC's global motion dynamics during transport, we investigated the structural morphology changes through a computational vibrational analysis using a coarse-grained representation of the NPC. Results of various NPC global motion characteristics specifically, the cytoplasmic unit, spoke complex and nuclear basket are obtained and discussed. The present results of spoke complex octagonal structure motions were compared with experimental observations and the existing literature in order to validate the present computational model. The cytoplasmic unit and nuclear basket structural frequencies and motions also reveal their role in NPC transport. The present approach can be extended along with multi-scale mechanics to further understand the transport mechanisms of NPC.