# Chromosome

Source: https://onco.cc/terms/chromosome/  
OnCo record `chromosome` (Term). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

One of the 46 long bundles into which a cell's DNA is packed. Cancer cells often have broken, missing, or extra chromosomes.

## Summary

Each human cell carries 23 pairs of chromosomes, one set from each parent, and each chromosome is a single continuous DNA molecule wrapped around proteins. Cancer cells frequently gain or lose whole chromosomes or pieces of them (aneuploidy), swap segments between chromosomes (creating gene fusions), or copy a segment many times over (amplification). Karyotypes and copy-number profiles read these large-scale changes; the Philadelphia chromosome in chronic myeloid leukaemia, which fuses BCR and ABL, was the first such change tied to a specific cancer and to a specific drug, imatinib.

## Fields

- Kind: Term
- Last checked: 2026-09-09
- Also known as: chromosomes; chromosomal

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome

## Connected records

- terms: [Amplification](https://onco.cc/terms/amplification/), [Deletion](https://onco.cc/terms/deletion/), [DNA](https://onco.cc/terms/dna-term/), [Gene](https://onco.cc/terms/gene/), [Gene fusion](https://onco.cc/terms/gene-fusion/), [Nucleus](https://onco.cc/terms/nucleus/)
- drugs: [Imatinib](https://onco.cc/drugs/imatinib/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/chromosome.json