Chromatin Compaction — from the DNA duplex to a metaphase chromosome

This playground renders chromatin in WebGL and needs JavaScript. The hierarchy it draws: a 2 nm DNA duplex wraps 147 bp in 1.65 turns around a histone octamer to make an 11 nm nucleosome; nucleosomes string together on a 10 nm fibre; that folds into loop domains held by cohesin at convergent CTCF sites; and in mitosis those become a helical array of ~400 kb loops around a condensin scaffold, packing 84.6 mm of chromosome 1 into a 10 µm chromatid — a linear compaction of about 8,500-fold.

20 nm

30 nm model

Camera

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