90% of chromosomes don’t look like X! Here’s how they look according to the researchers

Scientists have discovered what chromosomes actually look like. They claimed that these nucleic acids don’t look like the way people thought.

Chromosomes are the structures that contain the genetic data of a human being, which are passed on from parents to offspring. This is why children have some characteristics of their parents.

For many years, studies have claimed that a chromosome is flat and threadlike, which forms an X shape. These strands are basically complex arrangements of proteins and condensed DNA to allow kilometer lengths of DNA to be packaged into a microscopic nucleus.

According to the latest News18 report, researchers in the new study used a new way of visualizing the 3D organization of chromatin in human cells.

Most chromosomes are not X-shaped.

Phys Org reported that the scientists captured high-resolution 3D images of human chromosomes. These images could provide enough evidence to change the appearance of nucleic acids into more complex but much more accurate symbols, which could help solve the mysteries of how their structure works.

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The team of researchers created a chromosome map from both wide-angle images of 46 chromosomes and close-ups of a section of a chromosome. They used their new high-resolution 3D imaging method to do this.

Scientists captured the linked points or “genomic loci” along each DNA chain to visualize a very small structure. By doing this process, they were able to form a complete picture of the chromatin appearance.

The number of stitches is limited by a number of colors

Xiaowei Zhuang, one of the scientists, said the number of spots they could see and identify was limited to the number of colors they could imagine. Since they can only produce three points, they have not been able to develop a complete image.

Zhuang and his team took a different approach, which involves imaging three different loci, turning off the signal, and imagining three more loci in a quick process to solve the problem.

This new technique allowed the researchers to have two identification marks for each point, which are the round and colored image.

“We now have 60 loci simultaneously identified and located and, importantly, identified,” Zhuang said via the Phys Org.

However, they still have to create around thousands of dots to cover the entire genome. To make this possible, they turned to a language that is already used to store and organize huge amounts of information, binary.

They imprinted the binary barcodes on different color loci so that they could depict many more places and decode their identities.

The team differentiated 2,000 molecules in just 20 image rounds using 20-bit barcodes.

“In this combinatorial way, we can increase the number of molecules that are visualized and identified much faster,” explained Zhuang.

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Written by: Giuliano de Leon.

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