Although the complex process of ribosome assembly in the nucleolus is beginning to be understood, little is known about how the ribosomal subunits move from the nucleolus to the nuclear membrane for transport to the cytoplasm. We show here that large ribosomal subunits move out from the nucleolus and into the nucleoplasm in all directions, with no evidence of concentrated movement along directed paths. Mobility was slowed compared with that expected in aqueous solution in a manner consistent with anomalous diffusion. Once nucleoplasmic, the subunits moved in the same random manner and also sometimes visited another nucleolus before leaving the nucleus.
INTRODUCTIONIn eukaryotes, rRNA transcription and ribosome assembly take place in the nucleolus. Nascent ribosomes then exit the nucleolus and move into the cytoplasm. Multiple ribosomal proteins assemble with rRNA in the nucleolus and may facilitate proper processing of the pre-rRNA primary transcript (Fatica and Tollervey, 2002). Additionally, a significant number of nonribosomal proteins bind to these formative ribosomes in the nucleolus and also in the nucleoplasm after the nascent ribosomal subunits leave the nucleolus Kuersten et al., 2001;Nissan et al., 2002). The binding of particular proteins in a prescribed order is probably necessary for nucleocytoplasmic transport of the processed ribosomal subunits (e.g., Milkereit et al., 2001). The nuclear export of both the large and small ribosomal subunits has been shown to be dependent, at least indirectly, on the Ran-GTPase cycle and the exportin CRM1, and it is likely that CRM1-mediated export of 60S subunits requires the adaptor protein NMD3 (Moy and Silver, 1999;Ho et al., 2000;Gadal et al., 2001;Thomas and Kutay, 2003;Trotta et al., 2003). In situ hybridization experiments in fission yeast have indicated that rRNA may accumulate along short tracks when near the nuclear pores but nonetheless appears to exit from all the pores, not just those near the nucleolus (Léger-Silvestre et al., 1999). In situ hybridization studies in mammalian cells have primarily addressed the distribution of rRNA within the nucleolus (Huang, 2002) rather than the routes of extranucleolar rRNA traffic, because although high signal representing rRNA is routinely detected in both the nucleolus and the cytoplasm, nucleoplasmic signal which might represent ribosomes moving to the nuclear periphery is not easily detectable by in situ hybridization (PuvionDutilleul et al., 1991;Lazdins et al., 1997; J.C.R. Politz, unpublished observations). Therefore, very little is known about the spatial pattern or mechanism of rRNA movement from the nucleolus into the nucleoplasm and then to the nuclear pores for export (Cullen, 2000;Kuersten et al., 2001;Lei and Silver, 2002), although all three classes of eukaryotic RNAs, rRNA, mRNA, and pol III transcripts have been shown to exit from all the nuclear pores (Dworetzky and Feldherr, 1988;Pante et al., 1997;Mattaj and Englmeier, 1998).In previous studies in live cells (Politz et al., 1998, we investigat...