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Re:Everything you learned about the shape of DNA is wrong by Jun8 on Thursday March 31, 2016 @01:43PM (#11399039)
The money sentence is: "Each DNA molecule is six feet long. Our cells have to wind it tightly to fit in their interior — without tangling them in knots in the process. In fact, our cells have to unfold and refold DNA in order to read their genes."

Holy crap! This sounds so unbelievable at first sight that I googled it: From http://wow-really.blogspot.com/2006/11/your-dna-would-reach-...

"The human genome, the genetic code in each human cell, contains 23 DNA molecules each containing from 500 thousand to 2.5 million nucleotide pairs. DNA molecules of this size are 1.7 to 8.5 cm long when uncoiled, or about 5 cm on average."

So 23*8.5cm ~ 2m. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_nucleus we learn that the average size of a nucleus is 6 micrometers. if we just folded the total DNA like rope, halving it at each turn we need about 19 folds, which is huge! It would be interesting to calculate to see if a structure like the 3D Hilbert curve has enough packing efficiency to fit a strand this long into the nucleus.

Re:Everything you learned about the shape of DNA is wrong by tzs on Thursday March 31, 2016 @02:11PM (#11399254)
> Holy crap! This sounds so unbelievable at first sight that I googled it

That's nothing. If you want to see something even more unbelievable, look at what happens when it is unfolded for replication:

http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/dna-replication-advanced-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNKWgcFPHqw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZXT2uOcD2w

There is some pretty amazing stuff going on in the cell outside the DNA, too. To move stuff through the cell there are a series of things called microtubule. Think of them as like catwalks connecting various regions. To move things through the cell things called "motor proteins" are used. These are long proteins that attach at one end to thing to be moved, and (I'm not kidding) have a couple little feet at the other end that they use to walk along the microtubule towing their cargo.

Here's an animation of one walking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlPDEpimzB8

Here is an explanation of how the hell it does that chemically:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAva4g3Pk6k

Re:Everything you learned about the shape of DNA is wrong by tptacek on Thursday March 31, 2016 @08:21PM (#11401651)
The closed captions on that last video are pretty a-ok:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/whek2qi8o1yldwk/Screenshot%202016-...