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Systematic maps reveal how human chromosomes are organized

Our genomes are highly structured, which facilitates gene regulation. An ambitious project has catalogued the organization of DNA in the nuclei of human cells.
By
  1. Elzo de Wit

    1. Elzo de Wit is in the Division of Gene Regulation, Netherlands Cancer Institute, 1066CX Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

When you think of a chromosome, you might imagine an X-shaped structure. But chromosomes take this shape only during cell division; the rest of the time, they adopt a structure that looks amorphous when viewed under a standard microscope. At the molecular level, however, chromosomes are folded in a highly non-random manner, enabling the proper execution of crucial processes such as gene expression, DNA replication and DNA repair. In their flagship paper in Nature1, members of the 4D Nucleome Consortium report the outcome of the first phase of a project that aims to systematically catalogue the 3D organization of human chromosomes in the nucleus and how this changes over time.

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Nature 649, 558-560 (2026)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03808-9

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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