Tag Archives: telomeres

Cutting cancer cell immortality short

One of the characteristics of cancer cells is that they don’t die of old age. In a sense, they’re immortal – though of course they can be killed. The main reason for their longevity has been traced to telomeres a strip of non-coding genes at the ends of chromosomes. When normal cells replicate very often [...]
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Update: Genetic variations associated with aging

The DNA Dude has a background blog on telomeres and the genetic variation study, with illustration. The most recent and exciting news in this story was just published. It deals with the observation that telomere lengths differ in people of the same age. Although there is certainly an environmental affect on telomere length, it’s also [...]
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Study confirms telomere’s role in living longer

Confirmation is a vital part of the scientific process. In this case confirmation involves our knowledge of telomeres. We know that telomeres, the short strip of DNA found at the ends of chromosomes, play a big role in protecting the DNA from gene loss during the many replications within a cell. One of the 2009 [...]
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