chromosomes

[ (kroh-muh-sohmz) ]


The small bodies in the nucleus of a cell that carry the chemical “instructions” for reproduction of the cell. They consist of strands of DNA wrapped in a double helix around a core of proteins. Each species of plant or animal has a characteristic number of chromosomes. For human beings, for example, it is forty-six.

Notes for chromosomes

In humans, sex is determined by two chromosomes: an X-chromosome, which is female, and a Y-chromosome, which is male. (See sex chromosomes.)

Words Nearby chromosomes

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

How to use chromosomes in a sentence

  • When a cell division takes place, the nucleus breaks up into a number of thread-like portions which are known as chromosomes.

    Taboo and Genetics | Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
  • This is called maturation, or the maturation division, and the new cells have only half the original number of chromosomes.

    Taboo and Genetics | Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
  • Each of these divides again by mitosis (the chromosomes splitting lengthwise), the half or haploid number remaining.

    Taboo and Genetics | Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
  • That means that there is a determiner for it which is grouped with other determiners in one of the chromosomes.

    Physiology | Ernest G. Martin
  • We now know that these chromosomes are the actual controllers of heredity.

    Physiology | Ernest G. Martin