I have written about DNA before (regarding proteins and in the context of crimesceneinvestigations). What I have not broached yet is the physical constitution of the DNA molecule. The media (appropriately) keep things simple when a news story involves genetic concepts by talking about “letters”. DNA is the “code of life” made up of “letters”. Well, that’s all fine and well for broadcast television, but nobody really believes miniature scribes have painstakingly been writing the longest book in the history of the world using a four-letter alphabet. So what does DNA actually look like?

Our roadmap for the article. The various layers of DNA condensation. From Wikipedia article “Chromatin”.

If we were to zoom in on a skin cell, we could go straight into the nucleus, the yolk of the egg-like cell if you will. We will bypass the mitochondria for now, tiny energy factories outside the…