A team of researchers at UMass Medical School and the Prince
Felipe Research Centre in Spain have developed a new technology
capable of producing high resolution, three-dimensional images
of dense genetic areas in the human chromosome. This new
approach to visualizing the physical and structural attributes
of chromosomes—published this week in Nature Structural &
Molecular Biology—promises to provide scientists with realistic
3D models that will help them better understand which parts of
the genome are interacting with one another. Scientists know
that the shape and structure of the human genome varies from
cell to cell depending on which genes are active. Current
efforts to study the human genome, however, are often done in a
two-dimensional, linear sequence, an approach that fails to
adequately account for how the physical shape and structure of
the genome contributes to its ability to regulate genes and
carry out tasks. Recent insights indicate that genetic elements
spaced far apart along the genome may, i