Translation in the nucleus

If there is actin in the nucleus, then why not translation? Peter Cook (University of Oxford, Oxford, UK) and colleagues propose this heretical idea based on results Cook has been refining for four years. If true, the idea would have tremendous implications for research on nonsense-mediated decay (NMD), the process by which flawed messenger RNAs are identified and degraded.

“There is a dogma that translation only occurs in the cytoplasm,” says Miles Wilkinson (M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX), “but there's really no hard evidence—there's just a dogma.” Cook did not set out to disprove this dogma—his original experiments involved a high-resolution method for localizing protein synthesis in the cytoplasm. But to his surprise, he saw evidence for nuclear translation. He went back to the...