Telomeres glow at the end of chromosomes. Credit: Hesed Padilla-Nash and Thomas Ried of the NIH
New method may speed understanding of short telomere diseases and cancer and the new method they used to find it should speed discovery of other proteins and processes that determine telomere length. “We’ve known for a long time that telomerase doesn’t tell the whole story of why chromosomes’ telomeres are a given length, but with the tools we had, it was difficult to figure out which proteins were responsible for getting telomerase to do its work,” saysProf. Carol Greider, Ph.D (winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of telomerase.)
Figuring out exactly what’s needed to lengthen telomeres has broad health implications as shortened telomeres have been implicat...
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