Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Volume 3 Issue 9, September 2001

P3 skin cells after 3 weeks in culture. Nestin-immunoreactive cells are shown in red and nuclei are in blue. Cover design: Lawrence Keogh

Volume 3 Issue 9

Subscribe

Article

Top of page ⤴

Brief Communication

Top of page ⤴

Editorial

Top of page ⤴

Commentary

  • Current models for the export of messenger RNA share the notion that the highly abundant class of nuclear RNA-binding proteins — the hnRNP proteins — have a key role in exporting mRNA. But recent studies have led to a new understanding of several non-hnRNP proteins, including SR proteins and the conserved mRNA export factor ALY, which are recruited to the mRNA during pre-mRNA splicing. These studies, together with older work on hnRNP particles and assembly of the spliceosome, lead us to a new view of mRNA export. In our model, the non-hnRNP factors form a splicing-dependent mRNP complex that specifically targets mature mRNA for export, while hnRNP proteins retain introns in the nucleus. A machinery that is conserved between yeast and higher eukaryotes functions to export the mRNA.

    • Robin Reed
    • Keith Magni
    Commentary
Top of page ⤴

News & Views

  • Stem cells have been big news for the past couple of years and yet they remain remarkably inscrutable in terms of declaring their true nature and identity. On p. 778–784 of this issue, Toma et al. describe the identification of a new type of stem cell from the dermis of the skin, called SKP cells. These can be converted into several differentiated cell types in vitro, including neurons, and might become a source of cells for therapeutic tissue repair.

    • Jonathan Slack
    News & Views

  • Separase is a protease that cleaves the bonds between sister chromatids during cell division. Until now, separase was thought to be a somewhat repressed protease, cleaving only a few substrates in a very controlled fashion. New findings in this issue raise the possibility that separase has some of the atavistic impulses that characterize caspases, its more destructive relatives.

    • David Pellman
    • Michael F. Christman
    News & Views

  • The notion that a transmembrane receptor at the cell surface can somehow reappear as a transcription factor in the nucleus is bound to be controversial. However, there are two reported examples of this. If this hypothesis can withstand the inevitable and necessary battery of additional empirical tests then our understanding of signal transduction needs to move in a new direction.

    • Mark G. Waugh
    • J. Justin Hsuan
    News & Views
Top of page ⤴

Book Review

Top of page ⤴

Historical Perspective

Top of page ⤴

Search

Advanced search

Quick links