Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs), responsible for the nucleo-cytoplasmic exchange of proteins and nucleic acids, are dynamic macromolecular assemblies forming an eight-fold symmetric co-axial ring structure. Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) NPCs are made up of at least 456 polypeptide chains of ~30 distinct sequences. Many of these components (nucleoporins, Nups) share similar structural motifs and form stable subcomplexes. We have determined a high-resolution crystal structure of the C-terminal domain of yeast Nup133 (ScNup133), a component of the heptameric Nup84 subcomplex. Expression tests yielded ScNup133(944-1157) that produced crystals diffracting to 1.9Å resolution.
ScNup133(944-1157) adopts essentially an all α-helical fold, with a short two stranded β-sheet at the C-terminus. The 11 α-helices of ScNup133(944-1157) form a compact fold. In contrast, the previously determined structure of human Nup133(934-1156) bound to a fragment of human Nup107 has its constituent α-helices are arranged in two globular blocks. These differences may reflect structural divergence among homologous nucleoporins.