Table 2.

Summary of chromatin and nuclear features in situ.

Structural feature	RPE-1 G1	RPE-1 Meta	HeLaa	Yeasta
≥100 nm
Mitotic chromatin plates	n/a	Not seen	n/a	Not seen
Arc-shaped stacks/slinkies	Not seen	Not seen	Not seen	Not seen
100–200 nm periodic structure	Not seen	Not seen	Not seen	Not seen
Interphase domain shape	Irregular	n/a	Irregular	n/a
20–80 nm
Chromatin packing	Irregular	Irregular	Irregular	Irregular
Ordered trinucleosome stacks	Not seen	Not seen	Not seen	Not seen
Slinky oligonucleosomes	Not seen	Not seen	Not seen	Not seen
Megacomplexes (in chromatin)	Rare	Rare	Rare	n/a
Megacomplexes (in nucleoplasm)	Abundant	n/a	Abundant	Abundant
Dense irregular bodies	Rare	Not seen	Rare	in S. cere
Pockets (mitotic chromatin)	n/a	Rare	n/a	in S. pombe
Pockets (G1 chromatin domain)	Ambiguous	n/a	n/a	n/a
10–20 nm
Ordered dinucleosome stacksb	Abundant	Abundant	Not seen	Not seen
Gyre-interacting densitiesb	Abundant	Abundant	n/d	n/d
Canonical mononucleosome	Abundant	Abundant	Abundant	Rare
<10 nm
Ordered linker DNA length	Variable	Variable/no ultrashort	Long & short	Long & short
Linker DNA length symmetry	Asymmetric & symmetric	Asymmetric & symmetric	Asymmetric	Asymmetric

The chromatin and nuclear structural features (approximate size ranges in nanometers) of RPE-1 G1 phase (G1), Metaphase (Meta), HeLa interphase, and S. pombe and S. cerevisiae in interphase and mitosis (Yeast) are listed.

^aThe HeLa phenotypes are from (Cai et al, 2018a) while the yeast phenotypes are from (Cai et al, 2018b; Chen et al, 2016; Ng et al, 2019; Tan et al, 2023); note that these earlier studies have a smaller sample size of canonical nucleosomes than here. “Not seen” means that the expected structures were absent in our dataset. We cannot rule out that they exist at low abundance. n/a: not applicable. n/d: not determined due to sample size issues.

^bSome ordered higher-order nucleosome structures may be sensitive to cryoprotectants or image contrast effects.