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I was doing this question that asked: "How many centromeres does a typical chromosome have?"

I thought one and the answer was:"One, except for holocentric chromosomes."

So then what are "holocentric chromosomes"?

I assume they would be chromosomes with more than one centromere, but then why do they need more than one centromere? And where can I get some more information on them? I tried googling but did not find much info on this.

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  • $\begingroup$ I believe that you did the search but are you sure you spelled it correctly? Autocorrect may have changed it to Heliocentric Also are you using Google in a country other than the US? When I Google holocentric chromosome, the first two entries were NIH (National Institute of Health) Articles, then Images of Holocentric Chromosome, then the third was the English language Wikipedia article on Centromeres. It is possible that Google in another country will not have the same results as these. $\endgroup$
    – AMR
    Sep 7, 2015 at 1:12
  • $\begingroup$ I got the same results as you did. I didn't click open the NIH article, which proved to be quite helpful. $\endgroup$
    – liya77
    Sep 7, 2015 at 1:22
  • $\begingroup$ No worries. I was interested in seeing if maybe you were outside of the US and that would have been why you might not have gotten the necessary results. Thanks for responding! $\endgroup$
    – AMR
    Sep 7, 2015 at 1:26

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In most eukaryotes, the kinetochore protein complex assembles at a single locus termed the centromere to attach chromosomes to spindle microtubules. Holocentric chromosomes have the unusual property of attaching to spindle microtubules along their entire length.

source

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