Spandrels of the cell nucleus.

S.J. Gould and R. Lewontin in their famous "Spandrels paper" (1979) argued that many anatomical elements arise in evolution not due to their "current utility" but rather due to other "reasons for origin", such as other developmental processes, physical constraints and mechanical forces. Here, in the same spirit, we argue that a variety of molecular processes, physical constraints, and mechanical forces, alone or together, generate structures that are detectable in the cell nucleus, yet these structures themselves may not carry any specific function, being a mere reflection of processes that produced them.

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Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.