The chromosome as a dynamic structure of the cell nucleus

Hennig, Wolfgang

doi:10.1038/cr.1993.1

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Published: 01 January 1993

The chromosome as a dynamic structure of the cell nucleus

Wolfgang Hennig^1,2

Cell Research volume 3, pages 1–9 (1993)Cite this article

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Our view of eukaryotic chromosomes is still very much dictated by the classic ideas of geneticists and cytologists considering the chromosome just as a vehicle for genes. This one-sided view of chromosomes may have been strongly influenced by the many cytological observations made on polytene chromosomes. They, in particular, revealed that the activation of genes for transcription is accompanied by local decondensation of the chromosome as it becomes evident in the formation of puffs in polytene chromosomes¹. The studies of chromosomes have for many years been focused on the relationship between genes and bands or interbands as they are seen in polytene chromosomes (or in the supposed equivalents, the chromomeres, of meiotic prophase chromosomes). This has yielded much fruitful informations such as the first direct evidence for the relationship between differential gene activity and cellular differentiation by the demonstration by Clever² that steroid hormones directly regulate gene activity at the chromosomal level.

Studies on polytene chromosomes, however, do have the disadvantage that certain chromosomal elements, in particular centromeres and telomeres, as well as major heterochromatic regions of the genome, are usually not easily recognized or are even not detectable by microscopy. Thus polytene chromosomes have not been particularly useful in studies of these important chromosomal components. Only more recently, attention has been paid to the telomeric regions in polytene chromosomes (for review see ^{3, 4, 5}). Centro meric regions have mainly been studied in diploid cells⁶, since in polytene chromosomes these are often underreplicated. This is even more true for other heterochromatic chromosome regions, which often are not replicated at all during polytenization and may, in fact, be partially discarded from the chromosome as recent studies by Spradling and his coworkers⁷ indicated. Polytene chromosomes may also detract attention from important aspects of chromosome structure and function if it is not sufficiently realized that they represent interphase chromosomes of cells specialized to produce large amounts of certain gene products. Chromosome function, however, in reality, includes other essential tasks within the cell during mitosis and meiosis as well.

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Deparment of Molecular and Developmental Genetics, University of Nijmegen, Faculty of Science, Toernooiveld, 6525, ED Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Wolfgang Hennig
Maχ-PlanckGuest Laboratory, Shanghai Institute of Cell Biology, Academia Sinica, Shanghai, China
Wolfgang Hennig

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Hennig, W. The chromosome as a dynamic structure of the cell nucleus. Cell Res 3, 1–9 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1038/cr.1993.1

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Received: 12 October 1992
Accepted: 18 November 1992
Issue date: 01 January 1993
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/cr.1993.1

The chromosome as a dynamic structure of the cell nucleus

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