So earlier we said the entire purpose of the nucleus is to store, protect and express our genetic information, the DNA, the deoxyribonucleic acid. Now, the problem is the linear version of DNA is extremely long. In fact, if we take a single DNA molecule found inside the human cell and we extend it in a linear fashion, it will be over 5ft long and that's extremely long. So actually, what happens inside the nucleus is we take our linear DNA and we wind it around special proteins known as histones. And then we basically take the histones, we connect those histones and we coil them further to create a structure known as the chromatin, which is a very, very condensed version of our linear DNA. So inside the nucleus, the linear DNA is wound around special structural proteins called histones, combining eight histones forms, a structure known as the nucleosome.