Nucleus

The compartment that holds the genome, wrapped in a double envelope whose pores are the only way in or out.

Gateway

Nuclear pore complexes are the sole bidirectional gateway between nucleus and cytoplasm.

human, review · structural review · Lin DH, Hoelz A 2019, Annu Rev Biochem · source

Size of one pore

About 1,000 protein subunits, about 110 MDa in humans.

human · crystal structures, cross-linking mass spectrometry and cryo-electron tomography · Lin DH, Hoelz A 2019, Annu Rev Biochem · source

Pores per nucleus

Varies greatly between cell types, and changes during differentiation and transformation. No single figure holds across cells.

several human and mouse cell types · depletion and imaging · McCloskey A et al. 2018, Genes Dev · source

Nucleolus

The most prominent nuclear body, primarily dedicated to ribosome biogenesis, organised as a multiphase liquid condensate.

eukaryotic, review · review · Lafontaine DLJ et al. 2021, Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol · source

Not shown yet

Diameter and volume

No sourced value for this yet: nuclear size scales with cell size and differs by cell type, and no verified abstract gives a figure that would hold across the network's cells.

Behind the copy

The nucleus is enclosed by the nuclear envelope, which is crossed by nuclear pore complexes: the sole bidirectional gateway between nucleus and cytoplasm. Inside it sits the nucleolus, the most prominent nuclear body, primarily dedicated to ribosome biogenesis and organised as a multiphase liquid condensate.

source 1, source 2

Other organelles

All · Autophagosome · Centrosome · Cilia and flagella · Cytoskeleton · Endosomes and vesicles · Golgi · Lipid droplet · Lysosome · Mitochondrion · Nuclear envelope · Nucleolus · Peroxisome · Plasma membrane · Proteasome · Ribosome · Rough ER · Smooth endoplasmic reticulum

Building the copy.

Selected

Click a part of the copy or its label.

Look

Stain

No stain on cyto.site's table names a part this copy draws.

Real pictures

Panel of a six-part figure, cropped to this panel and otherwise unaltered, which CC BY allows with attribution. Human astrocyte differentiated from induced pluripotent stem cells of a healthy donor, 25 days in vitro. The authors describe it as a typical cell nucleus with an eccentrically located nucleolus, marked by the yellow arrow, and shallow invaginations of the envelope, marked by the red arrow. Scale bar 2 micrometres. The invaginations are worth noticing: the envelope drawn as a smooth sphere on most diagrams is not smooth here. Kutukova, Ivanov, Novosadova et al 2026, Modern Technologies in Medicine, CC BY 4.0 · source · transmission electron micrograph, panel b of figure 2