Recent findings have challenged the longstanding belief that heterochromatin is an inert and transcriptionally inactive structure. Studies in organisms ranging from fission yeast to animals have found ...

Two recent studies show that heterochromatin domain formation is driven by phase separation—a process in which proteins self-organize into liquid-like droplets that grow and fuse, allowing certain ...

Hitherto considered the junkyard of the genome, heterochromatin is now recognized as an important part of eukaryotic genomes, with functions that include chromosome segregation, nuclear organization ...