01
Nov
2005
Inheritance of Telomere Length
Permalink | View Comments (0) | Post Comment | Posted by Reason

Randall Parker of FuturePundit uses a recent study of telomere inheritance as the starting point for a discussion of telomeres and longevity:

Telomeres are caps on the ends of chromosomes. They get shorter each time cells divide. As the telomere caps become really short they start to interfere with cell division. This is one of the causes of aging. Telomere cap shortening is probably an evolved mechanism to reduce the risk of death from cancer. Cancers need to undergo a mutation to activate telomerase to grow longer telomere caps so that the cancer cells can divide many more times than normal cells can.

Given that shorter telomere lengths probably reduce cancer risk it is by no means guaranteed that people who inherit longer telomeres from their father will live longer on average.

If you're interested in learning more about telomeres - and the current state of knowledge regarding their place in the complex biochemical relationships between aging, cancer and cell life cycles - you should take a look and follow the links therein.

Technorati tags:

Comments
Post a comment; thoughtful, considered opinions are valued. Please note that comments incorporating ad hominem attacks, advertising, and other forms of inappropriate behavior are likely to be deleted.









Remember personal info?






First Steps

The Causes of Aging

Archives and Feeds

Required Reading

Initiatives

Benefiting from Medical Research

Objections Answered

Blogs of Interest

Creative Commons

  • All of Fight Aging!, with the exception of the introductory articles, is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. In short, this means that you are encouraged to republish and rewrite Creative Commons licensed Fight Aging! content in any way you see fit, the only requirements being that you (a) link to the original, (b) attribute the author, and (c) attribute Fight Aging!.