The prestigious online journal Science Thursday published research by a team of scientists including two University of Wisconsin Oshkosh chemists that sheds light on the structure of chromosomes.
James Paulson
UW Oshkosh biochemist James Paulson and organic chemist Linfeng Xie teamed up with researchers from across the world on the journal article, “A pathway for mitotic chromosome formation.”
Scientists have long studied the structure and function of chromosomes. In 1842, Swiss botanist Karl Wilhelm von Nageli first observed chromosomes in plant cells. Later, it was discovered that chromosomes—particles made up of DNA and proteins—are crucial in heredity and in the cell division process known as mitosis.
A key question—known as the “packing problem”—is how the DNA is packaged or condensed into a chromosome, since the amount of DNA in a typical human chromosome stretches 10,000 times as long as the chromosome itself. This is the question that the Science article addresses.
“We looked at how the DNA is arranged, what keeps it there and how the chromosome structure has remained consistent over generations,” Paulson said.
Watch the video to learn how the collaborative team of researchers from Massachusetts, Scotland, Japan and Oshkosh are beginning to unravel this DNA “packaging problem” and the role UWO researchers played in the project:
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