The Three-Dimensional Structure of the Human Genome

Scientists of the United States have decoded the 3-D structure of the human genome, which paves the way for a better understanding of genomic functions and structures.

'By the decomposition of the genome into millions of pieces, I created a map detailing the spatial connections between these pieces,' said Nynke van Berkum, one of the principal authors of the study and researcher at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Massachusetts. 'We made a fantastic three-dimensional puzzle and then, using a computer, we deciphered it,' he said.

For this achievement, the researchers used a new technology called 'Hi-C', which allowed them to find answers on how each cell in the body can contain about three billion base pairs human DNA and at the same time, be perfectly functional.

'We know for a long time that small-scale, DNA is a double helix. If this spiral would not fold and would be fully developed, the genome contained in each cell would measure six feet long,' said Erez Lieberman, Aiden, co-author of the study and researcher at Harvard University.'Researchers do not really understand how this structure can be inserted into the nucleus of a human cell, which has only one hundredth of a millimeter in diameter. This new technology allowed us to solve precisely this mystery,' said the expert.

Scientists have discovered that the human genome is organized into two distinct compartments that separate the active genes as the available proteins by the unused DNA, which remains stored. Chromosomes move from one compartment to another, while their DNA alternates between active and inactive portions of the genome. The study also revealed that genome adopts an unusual form of organization, which in mathematics is called 'fractal', which allows cells to 'squeeze' DNA inside the nucleus, where the information density is about three trillion times higher than in a microchip.

'Nature has devised an elegant solution for storing information – an extremely dense structure, free of knots,' said Eric Lander the principal author of the genome study.