A large gene-containing region of DNA in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster i

Question

A large gene-containing region of DNA in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is 92,672 base pairs long.
The length of linker DNA in Drosophila is 35 base pairs.

a) Approximately how many nucleosomes are required to organize this region of DNA into the 10nm fiber structure?

Answer is 512 nucleosomes.

b) The length of linker DNA segments varies somewhat among organisms. The length of the linker DNA in sea urchin is 110 base pairs.

Suppose it were possible to move the entire region of DNA (92,672 base pairs long) from Drosophila melanogaster into the genome of a sea urchin.

Approximately how many nucleosomes would be required to organize this region into the 10nm fiber structure?

Explanation / Answer

B. Length of DNA in nucleosome = 146 .

Length of linker DNA =110.

Length of nucleosome + linker = 146 +110 = 256.

Number of nucleosomes required = 92672 ÷ 256 = 362.

Therefore 362 nucleosomes are required to organize this region into the 10nm fiber structure.

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