Chromosome shaping by two condensins.

It remains a big challenge in modern cell biology to determine the mechanism by which a discrete set of rod-shaped chromosomes is assembled from an amorphous mass of interphase chromatin. Recent studies start to shed new lights on how this process is actively supported by a class of multiprotein complexes called condensins. In vertebrate cells, two different condensin complexes make distinct mechanistic contributions to determining the shape and integrity of mitotic chromosomes.