I <3 Telomerase

[Reverse Transcriptase]

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/press.html

Woo, Telomerase! The researchers who discovered it got a Nobel Prize, it was announced today.

I'm really excited about the Chemistry award... I hope it's also something in biochemistry. Last year's chemistry nobel was for GFP, something that is used extensively in biochem research.

edit/// Also not could it help us kill cancer, it could also help cure "aging". (Hopefully this serves as enough of a 'hook' to get Cog to post.)

 

[Agent Intellect]

Interesting. I wonder if they have isolated the gene(s) that code for the production of telomerase? It seems a mutation in the gene(s) that either code for it or gene(s) that are activators of it would be the main cause of malignancy in cancer. I wonder if cancers are extremely common, but only affect one or a few cells before apoptosis takes care of it? I don't really know a whole lot about how cancer works...

 

[Reverse Transcriptase]

AI, yup that happens. Also a lot of the time we have benign cancers living with us, but they're dividing just as fast as the rest of our cells, so we don't notice them. (However they hit us hard when we're at old age and fewer of our normal cells are dividing.)

There are a collection of "oncogenes", that need to be activated or deactived to turn a cell into a cancer. It's kind of just a numbers game.

Here's a nifty picture from the NIH via wikipedia. These two articles should help you out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncogene

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#Mechanism
[IDROITE]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/Cancer_requires_multiple_mutations_from_NIH.png[/IDROITE]

 

[Dormouse]

Haha, I'm actually attempting a science fair project on this... (well, probably, I have five different ideas on the go)
Anyways, this made my day. Sadly I haven't researched enough to contribute anything, but I must say this is extremely interesting. And thanks for the links.

 

[Yossarian]

So basically, If you live long enough, you will eventually get cancer. You can even figure out when!

Just find out your genetic disposition (# of basic mutations that will generate cancerous cells), your DNA polymerase error rate, the total number of nucleotides your DNA polymerase reads, the number of dividing cells in your body, and factor in the odds that the mutation may get put down by your bodies immune system before it gets going.

I've always been intrigued with telomerase since I first learned about it. It seems to me to be the only thing that is undergoing constant change (other than point mutations/wear and tear) from one cell division to the next and so it would seem that it is integral in the cell aging/dying process.

I know that with each division another telomeric sequence is added to the DNA ends. But why exactly does telomerase activity gradually decline as the cells age? Is it just wear and tear that gradually slows it down?

 

[Artifice Orisit]

Hopefully this serves as enough of a 'hook' to get Cog to post.

Spoiler

That's my "Wow" expression.

It's fascinating, now let me down.

 

[Jaico]

Dr. Blackburn gave a lecture at the university I'm attending; she actually didn't talk much about how it could prevent aging...she mainly focused on how telomeres could be used as an indicator of aging/how stress increases the rate of telomerase depletion as opposed to repairing them to prolong cell life (although she did touch on that a bit). Of course, a lot of the lecture went straight over my head, so...