Physiology Commons^™

The Role Of Subtelomeric Silencing In Aging, Mark Roth, Jonathan Alder, Phd

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Telomeres, located at the ends of chromosomes, are repetitive DNA sequences composed of TTAGGG repeated thousands of times. Each time a cell copies its DNA a small amount of telomeric DNA is lost due to the end replication problem. Because of this, telomeres are eventually lost. New telomeres are synthesized by telomerase. Telomerase has both a protein reverse transcriptase component (TERT) and an RNA template (TERC) that it uses to synthesize new telomeres; however, expression is tightly controlled and is not expressed in most cells in our bodies. This limits the number of times that most of our cells can …