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C3. PERFECT PACK Cells are tidy packers, cramming DNA into nuclei to create a tangle-free, dense ball with pieces that are still accessible. A human cell’s two meters of DNA is jammed into an area about a hundredth of a millimeter wide. But how can cells pack the DNA so tightly without hopelessly tangling it and making it impossible to use. The researchers found that the genome has a highly organized structure. Small pieces of DNA fold into globs, and those globs fold into larger globs and so on. The researchers report that this “globule of globules of globules” is fractal, meaning it is organized in such a way that it has the same pattern no matter how far you zoom in.
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