Question

If a typical animal cell contains 2m of DNA, and is the size of roughly a strand of human hair, how is all of that material squeezed into an even tinier compartment (the nucleus)

Answer 1

DNA is tightly packaged by histone proteins

Step-by-step explanation:

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a negatively charged molecule packaged into the cell nucleus by means of positively-charged proteins, thereby forming a nucleoprotein complex. In the first place, DNA is wrapped around dimers of four core histone proteins (H2A, H2B, H3, and H4 ), thereby forming nucleosomes consisting of histone octamers and 146 bp of lineal DNA. The nucleosome represents the basic unit of the chromatin organization. Subsequently, the nucleosomes are arranged into 30-nanometer (nm) chromatin fibers, which are then organized into higher loops (300 nm). During the cell division cycle, these higher-order chromatin loops are supercoiled into chromatids (700 nm) and chromosomes (1400 nm).