Telomere in Biological News

Researchers use chemical from medicinal plants to fight HIV

... because a part of their chromosomes known as a telomere becomes progressively shorter with cell division. ... therapy, can prevent or slow this progressive telomere shortening, which could make it a key weapon in ... . A telomere is a region at the end of every cell chromosome ...

When cells go bad

... the first to show in animals that losing just one telomere the end of a chromosome can lead to many ... "The essential point is that loss of a single telomere may be a primary event that puts a cell on the ... biology, found how fruit fly cells with a missing telomere sometimes avoid suicide and instead continue to ...

Baumann lab identifies elusive telomere RNA subunit in single cell model

... for new anti-cancer drugs. A correlation between telomere length and a variety of diseases has further ... on the sometimes surprising correlations between telomere shortening and stress, smoking, obesity, and a ... in a variety of simple model organisms, but telomere maintenance turned out to be quite different in ...

Could vitamin D, a key milk nutrient, affect how you age?

... stress. Using a genetic marker called leukocyte telomere length (LTL), they found those with the highest ... lower levels of inflammation and body stress. The telomere difference between those with the highest and ... there are several lifestyle factors that affect telomere length (obesity, smoking and lack of physical ...

Peter Baumann named Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientist

... degenerative diseases. On the other hand, telomerase, a protein central to telomere elongation, is activated in most cancer cells and is considered a promising target for anticancer drugs. By understanding how telomere lengthening is regulated and how telomeres are prevented from becoming too ...

UT Southwestern researchers identify gene linked to inherited form of fatal lung disease

... almost 15 percent of those with familial IPF. Up to 40 percent have short telomere lengths and evidence of telomerase dysfunction. "But we were still left ... Dr. Garcia said. "What about the rest of the families that have normal telomere lengths? What was causing their lung disease?" In the current study, ....

Landmark study opens door to new cancer, aging treatments

... "It's extremely exciting," Skordalakes says. "For the first time, we can see how telomerase assembles at the end of chromosomes to initiate telomere replication." Looking ahead Skordalakes plans to further study TERT and search for new telomerase inhibitors that could become cancer ...

UCLA study identifies mechanism behind mind-body connection

... heart disease and aging. Previous studies show that an enzyme within the cell, called telomerase, keeps immune cells young by preserving their telomere length and ability to continue dividing. FINDINGS: UCLA scientists found that the stress hormone cortisol suppresses immune cells' ability to ...

Osteoarthritis may be sign of faster 'biological ageing'

... the findings showed that white cell telomere lengths were associated with chronological age. ... the 160 people with hand osteoarthritis, the telomere length was significantly shorter than among those ... osteoarthritis were over 50, and the amount of telomere shortening was equivalent to that accrued over 11 ...

A little telomerase isn't enough

... animals turns out to be the animal's inherited telomere length, not the status of the telomerase gene, ... "We know it only takes one critically short telomere to make a cell die, so it's clear that the more ... lab reported the role of the critically short telomere in 2001. The usual treatment for people with ...

Tiny roundworm's telomeres help scientists to tease apart different types of aging

... available online now. In the past, preventing telomere shortening has often been portrayed as the key to ... C. elegans is the perfect model organism to study telomere biology since their regulation is similar to ... In humans and, as we know now, in worms, telomere length is certainly not a limiting factor for ...

DNA end caps may lead to cancer treatments, UT Southwestern researchers report

... professor of cell biology. In human cells, every chromosome has a telomere at each end, and each telomere ends in a single-stranded overhang. (DNA is normally double-stranded.) The ...

GATA: a graphic alignment tool for comparative sequence analysis

... of telomerase inhibitors. Importantly, tankyrase inhibition enhanced telomere shortening upon treatment with a telomerase inhibitor and accelerated ... the time period of drug treatment that is required for the onset of telomere crisis and reduce the potential risk of acquired drug resistance, " writes ...

Combination therapy boosts effectiveness of telomere-directed cancer cell death

... of telomerase inhibitors. Importantly, tankyrase inhibition enhanced telomere shortening upon treatment with a telomerase inhibitor and accelerated ... the time period of drug treatment that is required for the onset of telomere crisis and reduce the potential risk of acquired drug resistance, " writes ...

Exploring the dark matter of the genome

... that we don't understand the genome yet." Celniker agrees. "What we would like to see is a complete sequence of the fruit fly from telomere to telomere" -- that is, from one end of the chromosomes to the other -- including the centromere in the middle." Obtaining a more complete picture ...

Aging cells, aging body: Fresh evidence for a connection

... the presence of six biomarkers, or biological "red flags," that signal cellular aging. For replicative senescence, the most important biomarker is telomere dysfunction-induced foci, or TIFs. Presence of these structures signals that the protective chromosome caps called telomeres have dwindled enough to ...