Figure 7: Distribution density of condensin shapes the metaphase chromosome.
From: Condensin I associates with structural and gene regulatory regions in vertebrate chromosomes
The condensin complex (yellow circles) gathers the chromatin into lateral loops (blue), which are centred along a chromatid axis. Chromatin loop size determines the overall width of mitotic chromatids. Large loops are regularly spaced within and between genes to compact most of the genome into sausage-shaped chromatids. At specialized loci such as the centromeres, telomeres and rDNAs, chromatin loops are smaller, producing constricted regions.
