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by curtis 2667 days ago
Seeing the piles of accumulated paper tape does actually illustrate an interesting question: How exactly is 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA folded up in a human cell?
3 comments

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatin:

> Chromatin is a complex of DNA, RNA, and protein found in eukaryotic cells. Its primary function is packaging very long DNA molecules into a more compact, denser shape, which prevents the strands from becoming tangled and plays important roles in reinforcing the DNA during cell division, preventing DNA damage, and regulating gene expression and DNA replication.

I wonder if it's possible to visualize how Chromatin works from the DNA paper tape?

Multiple stages of spiralwound loops.

https://slideplayer.com/slide/6324118/

Yes, it’s quite amazing, no less that the whole thing is constantly copied and repackaged, and remember there are 2 versions of your genome (one from mum one from dad) so it’s actually 6 billion base pairs. The 3 dimensional organisation of the genome is very important, it’s an active area of research.