ANDRZEJ KRAUZEHobbit houses, jigsaw puzzles, and nuclear pores have a lot more in common than you might think.
In 1937, J.R.R. Tolkien introduced his dearly beloved hobbits as “a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves.” Their domiciles “had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel.” Not such a bad description of nuclear pore complexes either, those intricately constructed portals that pierce the double membrane enveloping the nucleus and control traffic into and out of the organelle. Of course, the aptness of the analogy has a lot to do with the level of magnification (not to mention imagination). But you can judge for yourself in this month’s issue, with illustrations that go from a 3-D ...
