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Chromosomes vs. chromatids

27/12/2010 3 Comments

(c) Hybrid Medical Animation

(c) Hybrid Medical Animation

I’ve been writing up my talks and am surprised how long it has taken me to get through the material. For now, I thought I’d address some common questions:

        1. what is a chromosome vs. a sister chromatid?
        2. what n value do you use? (especially during meiosis)

When we see pictures of chromosomes, they often look like an X (as seen in the thumbnail for these chromosome posts). In my posts, I often draw them as a straight line. Are these both chromosomes? Yes.

chromosome1I’m sorry for the confusion but both the single and double purple lines 1 are chromosomes. This gets extra confusing when we are taking chromosomes through mitosis and meiosis – how many chromosomes are at each stage?

NOTE: We won’t go over meiosis and mitosis yet but my advice is that you don’t worry so much about compartmentalizing all the information but rather think about what is happening. Cell division and gamete creation is a fluid process so the snapshots of details don’t give the best understanding. An analogy would be trying to analyze a runner by the snapshots of footstrike then heel raised = you can get lots of detail but the feeling is gone. So we’ll go after the major concepts and then add any needed details at certain spots.

Number of N

Some people like to measure the amount of chromosome material, using ‘n’. When an organism is has one chromosome complement, it has just 1n and is considered haploid. This is like human eggs and sperm = there is only one set of the 23 chromosomes. When egg and sperm combine in conception, the zygote is 2n or diploid. This is most of our cells. I don’t worry about 2n, 4n, or 1n as I go through meiosis because it just confuses me. Again, just figure out the concept and you’ll be able to answer the questions re: amount of genetic material.

Chromatid/chromosome

Now that we’re not worrying about n, this becomes less of a worry and I’ll tell you my cheat. I count something as a chromosome when there is a centromere. So in the diagram above, each structure is one chromosome because there is one centromere.

If you want more information, a chromatid is one of those lines in the X-structure. The sister chromatids are identical copies of the same DNA that are joined at the centromere. This chromosome splits into two chromosomes with their own centromeres at the end of meiosis or cell division.

I hope I’ve helped your worries on these areas of confusion – either you aren’t concerned about the question or better yet, you understand the concepts

  1. changed from strand on May 5, 2013 to decrease confusion from the word ‘strand’. ↩

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Filed Under: chromosomes, MedGen Intro Tagged With: chromatid, chromosomes, definition

Comments

  1. nanonyme says

    03/05/2011 at 10:40 am

    Hey, thanks for the series. Are you still going to continue it? I’m really thankful it’s rather on a layman level since my background is a programmer and I got interested in genetic encoding hence I thought to start with getting some background on chromosomes.
    (the likely fact I’m never going to fully grasp genetic encoding doesn’t bother me that much)
    Back before reading this series I started wondering if there are analogies between DNA and compiled computer code where in the latter part of the stuff is passive data – like eye color and whatever might be in DNA – and part is executable code. (obviously if so, the executable code would probably look so vague without knowing what the “system” it’s run on actually works like that it would appear to be just redundant genes)
    Anyhow, back to the real world: would be glad to read more of this series to have some real knowledge on the subject.

    Reply
    • Catherine Anderson says

      03/05/2011 at 11:09 am

      Thanks for the prompt. I do have plans to continue and now you’ve given me a reason to stop putting it off!
      Great question re: analogy between DNA and compiled computer code. I’ll have to think about that – and learn a bit more about computer code 🙂

      Reply
  2. diablonecros says

    25/07/2011 at 3:02 pm

    wow thanks for clearing this up! The chromosome vs chromatid thing got me confused. Thanks so much!

    Reply

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genegeek150logoHello. I'm Catherine and I'm using this space to try something outside of academic writing. I enjoy molecular genetics, science education, crafts, and travel. I hope you enjoy my projects and writing. Read More…

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