How to Compact DNA

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The DNA is tailor made or vice versa for the cell. I don't know, it's not one size fits all. So let's start addressing this question of how we take a meter long molecule of DNA and squeeze it into the nucleus of a cell. How can you neutralize that charge? First answer is ions. You can have positively charged ions that neutralize the charge. But if you really want to compact DNA, you go three and higher. And you can provide those charges either through some ions directly or through proteins that also can be charged. In eukaryotes, histones are universal,. as far as we know, with a quirky exception, which I can tell you

Eukaryotic cells manage to pull off a number of remarkable feats. One is packing quite a long DNA molecule, with potentially billions of base pairs, into a tiny central nucleus. A key role is played by histones, proteins that provide scaffolding for DNA to wrap around. Histones also appear in archaea (one of the other domains of life), but until recently there wasn't evidence for them in bacteria (the final of the three domains). Todays guest, Tobias Warnecke, is an author on a recent paper that claims to provide such evidence. We discuss this new result, as well as background questions of how cells evolved and what their current structure can teach us about their histories.

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Tobias Warnecke received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Bath. He is currently a Programme Leader and MRC Investigator at the London Institute of Medical Sciences. He is a co-author on A. Hochner et al. (2023), "Histone-Organized Chromatin in Bacteria."

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