Jamming a week’s worth of clothing into a carry-on suitcase is tough, but consider the challenge a human cell faces with its DNA. More than 6 feet of this double-stranded molecule, making up a cell’s 23 pairs of chromosomes, must get stuffed into the cell’s microscopic nucleus. Just as people might roll or fold their clothes in special ways to stuff a piece of luggage, cells have devised tricks of their own to cram in all their DNA.
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