Specialization of nuclear membrane in eukaryotes

Abstract

The size of the intracellular structure that encloses genomic DNA - known as the nucleus in eukaryotes and nucleoid in prokaryotes - is believed to scale according to cell size and genomic content inside them across the tree of life. However, an actual scaling relationship remains largely unexplored across eukaryotic species. Here, I collected a large dataset of nuclear and cell volumes in diverse species across different phyla, including some prokaryotes, from the published literature and assessed the scaling relationship. Although entire inter-species data showed that nuclear volume correlates with cell volume, the quantitative scaling property exhibited differences among prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes and multicellular eukaryotes. Additionally, the nuclear volume correlates with genomic content inside the nucleus of multicellular eukaryotes but not of prokaryotes and unicellular eukaryotes. In this Hypothesis, I, thus, propose that the basic concept of nuclear-size scaling is conserved across eukaryotes; however, structural and mechanical properties of nuclear membranes and chromatin can result in different scaling relationships of nuclear volume to cell volume and genomic content among species. In particular, eukaryote-specific properties of the nuclear membrane may contribute to the extreme flexibility of nuclear size with regard to DNA density inside the nucleus.

Keywords: Allometry; Cell size; Genomic content; Intracellular size scaling; Nuclear size.