Credit: Image: Courtesy of Christine Smoyer, Stowers Institute for Medical Research
The conserved nuclear protein Ndc1 controls the insertion of holes into the nuclear membrane (shown in bluish purple). These openings become the sites for two essential structures: passageways called nuclear pore complexes (shown in purple), and spindle pole bodies (shown in green and blue), which anchor the microtubules (shown in yellow) that pull chromosomes to opposite sides of a dividing cell. The nucleoplasm is shown in dark green and the cytoplasm in grey.