The Nucleus Introduced

Now is an opportune moment to address the confluence of cell biological form and function that is the nucleus. Its arrival is especially timely because the recognition that the nucleus is extremely dynamic has now been solidly established as a paradigm shift over the past two decades, and also because we now see on the horizon numerous ways in which organization itself, including gene location and possibly self-organizing bodies, underlies nuclear functions.

“We have entered the cell, the Mansion of our birth, and started the inventory of our acquired wealth.”—Albert Claude

When I first read that morsel from Albert Claude’s 1974 Nobel Prize lecture it seemed Solomonic wisdom, as it indeed was. Though he was referring to cell biology en toto, the study of the nucleus was then at a tipping point and new advances were just at hand. Since then, the nucleus field has literally nucleated and we are now at a position to both admire the recent past and register excitement about the present and where the nucleus field may be headed.