Mitotic chromosomes: from the chromosome scaffold model to condensins and physical forces

Mitotic chromosome organization and assembly remain fundamental questions in genetics. Since the chromosome scaffold model proposed in 1977 highlighted the role of nonhistone proteins in determining chromosome shape and size, key nonhistone proteins, including condensins and topoisomerase IIα (topoIIα), have been shown to play critical roles in organizing chromosome axes and chromatin loops. Emerging evidence from biochemistry, imaging, and genomics suggests that mitotic chromosome assembly is a dynamic process driven by the interplay of condensin-mediated looping, topoIIα-dependent entanglement/disentanglement, and multiple physical forces, including electrostatic nucleosome interactions, linker histone H1, free Mg²⁺, and depletion attraction. In this review, we discuss how these mechanisms contribute to chromosome assembly and propose that interphase chromatin domains function as dynamic building blocks of mitotic chromosomes.