A condensin protein (red) binds DNA (green) and extrudes a DNA loop.CEES DEKKER LAB, KAVLI INSTITUTE OF NANOSCIENCE
Researchers at Kavli Institute of Delft University and EMBL Heidelberg have filmed a protein apparatus manipulating the shape of DNA. In the video, a condensin complex remains bound at the stem of a piece of DNA, which it pulls into a loop. This mechanism is vital to the cell’s ability to neatly package meters-long strands of DNA base pairs into compact chromosomes only a few micrometers in size.
Mahipal Ganji, a biophysicist at Delft University, and colleagues reported in Science on February 22 that they first tethered two ends of a piece of DNA to a surface and observed the condensin complex as it moved along the strand, pulling DNA into a loop at a rate of about 0.6 kilobase pairs per second.
M. Ganji et al., “Real-time imaging of...
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