FLICKR, NIHWhen healthy individuals perform a cardiovascular workout, their muscles increase transcription of telomeres, according to a study published today (July 27) in Science Advances. The team also identifies a novel transcription factor that appears to promote telomere transcription and provides the first direct evidence that telomere transcription is linked to exercise and metabolism in people.
“The novelty and merit of this work is that the authors demonstrate, for the first time, that [telomere transcription] occurs in response to physical exercise in a physiological system—human muscle,” Claus Azzalin, who studies telomere transcription at ETH Zurich in Switzerland but was not involved in the work, wrote in an email to The Scientist.
“This is a new link between metabolism and telomeres,” said study coauthor Anabelle Decottignies of the de Duve Institute in Brussels, Belgium. “We were able to show that metabolism, in the form of exercise, can promote transcription at telomeres.”
Telomeres were thought to be transcriptionally silent until several years ago when researchers found that mammalian telomeres, including human ones, are readily transcribed into telomeric repeat–containing RNA (TERRA). These RNA molecules ...
