By Riya Gohil
(Noun. /NEW-klee-uh-sohm/)
What does it mean?
A nucleosome is a unit of eight proteins (called histones) that DNA wraps around, like how thread wraps around a spool. If you stretch out the DNA inside a single human cell, DNA would be about 6 feet long! That’s a lot of DNA that needs to fit inside a nucleus of a cell, which is only about 100 micrometers wide on average. In order to package or condense DNA in an organized way to allow for it to fit into such a small space, DNA is wrapped around nucleosomes.
How do I use it in a sentence?
Whether a gene is transcribed depends on how tightly or loosely DNA is wrapped around nucleosomes.
Fields of study in which this word is commonly used
Genetics
Related terms
