Telomerase

Facts about telomerase

http://www4.utsouthwestern.edu/cellbio/shay-wright/intro/facts/sw_facts.html

an example telomere repeating sequence: TTAGGG

telomere length: can be up to about 15,000 bp

telomere loss per cell division: about 25-200 bp

telomerase 10-20X more active in cancer cells

critically short length for telomere: ?

historical figures involved with telomerase discoveries -Herman Muller, Elizabeth Blackburn, August Weissmann (around 1881), Hayflick (around 1961), Carol W. Greider (around the 80s)

diseases associated with faulty telomerase holoenzyme complex -dyskeratosis congbenita is caused by a mutation in the dyskerin protein.

components of telomerase holoenzyme -TERT (protein part) --the TERT protein has at least different isoforms (3) -TERC or TR (RNA part) -DKC1 -other proteins? http://string-db.org/newstring_cgi/show_network_section.pl?taskId=wTgLx7RN_8qX&interactive=_unassigned&network_flavor=actions -here's a diagram of some other proteins interacting with TERT at the Artandi lab stanford webpage http://www.stanford.edu/group/artandi/telomerase.htm

Super-active telomerase exists (Julian Chen at ASU has worked with this)

centenarians and their offspring have longer telomeres compared to the telomeres of the whole population on average

Interaction of telomerase with other proteins? If I remember correctly, telomerase can interact with other proteins to turn other genes on and off as well. I would be interested to know what other types of proteins and/or transcription factor proteins telomerase interacts with to do this. Can telomerase act as a transcription factor itself? I don't know. -Telomerase interacts with quite a few other proteins. see http://string-db.org/newstring_cgi/show_network_section.pl?taskId=wTgLx7RN_8qX&interactive=_unassigned&network_flavor=actions

Factors affecting telomerase transcription? There are many factors that can influence the level of expression of telomerase in a cell. For example, I know that estrogen even binds to proteins which then either directly or indirectly influence how proteins bind to the promoter of telomerase and upregulate or downregulate telomerase expression. There are many other compounds besides estrogen that have an influence. I wish I knew much more about this.

Post-translational modifications of telomerase Does telomerase get phosphorylated at various sites to enhance or reduce various functions as many other proteins do? Yes it does. Some of the phosphorylation sites can be found here http://www.phosphosite.org/proteinAction.do;jsessionid=71C94B3261C802ED99FA94C29B195611?id=3829&showAllSites=false

companies that claim to lengthen or maintain telomeres Some research papers on telomerase portal 6-14-13 Organizations to measure telomeres Telomerase Research Paper by Mara