What is a telomere and its role in cell division?
Why is telomerase an active area in cancer research?
Not just research!!!
There are investigational new drugs that are telomerase inhibitors that seem to slow the growth of advanced cancers in clinical trials.
Most differentiated cells in a human turn off the expression of telomerase. This limits the number of times their chromosomes can be replicated before the ends shorten into coding sequences, leading to cell death. Cancer cells can only be immortal by turning telomerase expression back on.
Reply:you can ask this research group ....they have a message board you can use........http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/
Reply:Telomeres are repeated DNA caps on chromosomes that prevent the chromosome from being digested by endonucleases. As we get older the telomeres shorten and can become lost so that genes can be lost and the organism looses function. There is evidence that cancers can beef up their telomeres so that they can go through multiple divisions without losing function. There is also evidence that telomere loss can contribute to chromosomal rearrangements that may cause or promote cancer formation.
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