Highlights from Dr Elizabeth Blackmore’s talk on telomeres and telomerase

Unfortunately because this is a quick post I don’t have time to locate references for some of the things I learned tonight:

• Telomerase levels, and telomere length, are very strongly correlated with a gamut of human health outcomes, from stress to heart rate to longevity to abstract psychometrics like ‘rumination’.
• Telomerase resembles a kind of reverse transcriptase with a built in fragment of RNA that acts both as a kind of primer for the target telomere and as a functional moiety.
• Longevity has a far greater inherited component that I knew, but this only seems to kick in over the age of 75. Past that age, higher telomerase levels and longer telomeres have a strong negative correlation with geriatric diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.
• Telomerase isn’t just good for extending telomeres. Even if RNA interference is used to disrupt the RNA portion of the enzyme, making it impossible for it to bind to DNA, telomerase levels have strong phenotypic correlates. In one experiment, induced higher telomerase levels lead to stem cell proliferation – the mouse model became a ball of fur because it had such a high density of new follicular cells.

Overall the talk was a perfect balance of hard science and human interest. Dr Blackmore is an excellent speaker and I strongly recommend seeing one of her presentations if you have the chance.

Scientists characterise active region of telomerase

From ScienceDaily:

“Telomerase is an ideal target for chemotherapy because it is active in almost all human tumors, but inactive in most normal cells,” Skordalakes says. “That means a drug that deactivates telomerase would likely work against all cancers, with few side effects.”

Not to mention the potential for longevity treatment, and of course the inevitable skin lotions. I don’t know much about human (or eukaryotic for that matter) cell biology so I’ll leave any more commentary to the experts. The Royal Society of NSW is hosting a public lecture in Sydney tomorrow night on “Roles of Telomeres and Telomerase in Human Health and Disease”. The speaker is none other than Dr Elizabeth Blackburn, co-discoverer of telomerase. Glancing at her wiki entry, I found that she was also kicked off the President’s Council on Bioethics for trying to inject some actual science into their recommendations.  Win.