Annals of Clinical Trials and Vaccines Research

Chromosome :

 German biologist Walter Flemming within the first 1880s revealed that in cell division the nuclear material organize themselves into visible thread like structures which were named as chromosomes which stains deep with basic dyes. The term chromosome was coined by W. Waldeyer in 1888. Chrome is coloured and soma is body, hence they mean “colored bodies” and should be defined as higher order organized arrangement of DNA and proteins. It contains many genes or the hereditary units, regulatory elements and other nucleotide sequences. Chromosomes also contain DNA-bound proteins, which serve in packaging the DNA and control its functions. Chromosomes vary both in number and structure among organisms (Table 1) and thus the amount of chromosomes is characteristic of every species. Benden and Bovery in 1887 reported that the quantity of chromosomes in each species is constant. W.S. Sutton and T. Boveri in 1902 suggested that chromosomes are the physical structures which acted as messengers of heredity. Chromosomes are tightly coiled DNA around basic histone proteins, which help within the tight packing of DNA. During interphase, the DNA isn't tightly coiled into chromosomes, but exists as chromatin. The structure of a chromosome is given in Figure 2. In eukaryotes to suit the entire length of DNA within the nucleus it undergoes condensation and thus the degree to which DNA is condensed is expressed as its packing ratio which is that the length of DNA divided by the length into which it's packaged into chromatin in conjunction with proteins.  

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