The differences between human and mosquito DNA aren’t limited to the arrangement of letters in the genetic code. If you were to slice open a human cell and a mosquito cell and peer into the nucleus of each, you’d see that their chromosomes are folded with a dramatically different type of genetic origami. Now researchers have figured out how to fold one type of DNA to take the shape of the other.
“In the human nucleus the chromosomes are bunched into tidy packages,” said Claire Hoencamp, a doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam. “But in the mosquito nucleus the chromosomes are folded in the middle.”