FLICKR, ZAPPYS TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONSATM kinase, an enzyme known to be involved in DNA repair, is required for telomere elongation, according to a study published this week (November 12) in Cell Reports. The results could have implications for diverse diseases, from cancer, which is typically linked to overly long telomeres, to lung and bone marrow disorders that are associated with shortened telomeres.
“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,” Carol Greider, a director at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences and a corecipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of telomerase, said in a press release.
Identifying enzymes involved in maintaining telomere length in mammalian cells has been slow going, requiring blocking individual proteins’ functions then growing the cells in the lab and looking for differences in telomere length between experimental and control cells. In addition to taking at least three months ...
