telomerase tagged posts

Telomerase mRNA Reverses Senescence in Progeria Cells. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2017.06.017

John P. Cooke, M.D., Ph.D studied cells from children with progeria, a rare condition marked by rapid aging that usually robs them of the chance to live beyond their early teens. They focused on progeria, because the condition tells them a lot about aging in general that’s ultimately relevant to all of us. “These kids are dying of heart attack and stroke at 13, 14, 15 years old,” Cooke said. Although current therapies are useful, they only add a year or two, on average, to the child’s life...

Dr. Yanbin Dong, geneticist and cardiologist at the Georgia Prevention Institute at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and Dr. Haidong Zhu, molecular geneticist at the GPI. Credit: Phil Jones

The length of your telomeres appears to be a window into your heart health and longevity, and scientists are measuring them to see if vitamin D and omega-3 supplements really improve both. “Many people take these supplements every day to help protect their heart and slow aging without significant clinical evidence that they do either,” said Dr. Yanbin Dong, geneticist and cardiologist at the Georgia Prevention Institute at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

Telomeres are found on either end of the chromosomes inside your cells where they essentially function as a b...

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...

This is a photograph of subunits of telomerase. Credit: UCLA department of chemistry and biochemistry

Research could lead to new strategies for treating disease. The telomerase enzyme is known to play a significant role in aging and most cancers. Scientists have discovered several major new insights about this enzyme and they are now able to see the complex enzyme’s sub-units in much sharper resolution than ever before.

Telomerase is particularly active in cancer cells, which helps make them immortal and enables cancer to grow and spread. Scientists believe that controlling the length of telomeres in cancer cells could be a way to prevent them from multiplying.
Feigon and her colleagues have been filling in pieces of the telomerase puzzle, using Tetrahymena...