{"id":552,"date":"2009-10-08T10:20:17","date_gmt":"2009-10-07T21:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2009\/10\/ivewhy_we_have_telomerase\/"},"modified":"2023-06-18T20:27:13","modified_gmt":"2023-06-18T08:27:13","slug":"ivewhy-we-have-telomerase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2009\/10\/ivewhy-we-have-telomerase\/","title":{"rendered":"why we have telomerase"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve known for ages about the enzyme called telomerase, & I’ve known why it’s important – but I have to confess that I’ve never actually thought particularly hard about\u00a0why<\/i> we need it. ‘Why’ being in the practical, ‘what’s going on in the cell?’ sense. Lazy thinking on my part, I guess. But today I found out, & learned something new \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Telomerase is an enzyme that comes into play in some cells during DNA replication.\u00a0This complex process\u00a0requires that a double strand of DNA be unwound &\u00a0a copy made of each strand. (There’s a good tutorial & animation of the process here<\/a>.) A\u00a0number of enzymes are involved in this, but for some reason\u00a0life has only ever evolved one\u00a0form of the enzyme (polymerase) that actually\u00a0carries out the copying part of the task. And it copies DNA in one direction only – a difficulty overcome by the fact that one strand is copied in a continuous piece, while the other is copied in smaller chunks that are later stitched together by yet another enzyme. (Have another look at that tutorial<\/a> – and there’s another nice animation here<\/a>. There are some wonderful educational films & animations on YouTube!)<\/p>\n

One of the consequences of this is that each time a DNA strand is copied, it will get a little shorter at one end. Obviously if\u00a0this meant that functioning genes would be lost, we’d have a problem; the\u00a0evolutionary solution to this problem\u00a0is telomeres – long\u00a0non-coding repeating sequences that can be shortened many times<\/a> before the cell’s functions are affected. However, there eventually comes a time when the cell can’t replicate any longer – this means that somatic (body) cells don’t have the ability to go on replicating forever. But the cells that produce gametes – the ‘germ cells’ – have active telomerase, which restores the sections of telomeres lost when these cells divide. (Unfortunately, cancer cells gain the ability to express telomerase, thus making themselves effectively immortal – some lineages of cancer cells have been grown in the lab for decades, far longer than normal somatic cells can continue to divide.)<\/p>\n

The discovery of the roles and functioning of telomeres and telomerase was recognised by this year’s\u00a0Nobel Prize in\u00a0Physiology or Medicine<\/a>. And you can read an excellent explanation of the whole telomere\/telomerase thing on Larry Moran’s blog\u00a0Sandwalk<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve known for ages about the enzyme called telomerase, & I’ve known why it’s important – but I have to confess that I’ve never actually thought particularly hard about\u00a0why we need it. ‘Why’ being in the practical, ‘what’s going on in the cell?’ sense. Lazy thinking on my part, I guess. But today I found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,5,6,2],"tags":[3,12,8,4,34],"yoast_head":"\nwhy we have telomerase : BioBlog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2009\/10\/ivewhy-we-have-telomerase\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"why we have telomerase : BioBlog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve known for ages about the enzyme called telomerase, & I’ve known why it’s important – but I have to confess that I’ve never actually thought particularly hard about\u00a0why we need it. ‘Why’ being in the practical, ‘what’s going on in the cell?’ sense. 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