Cumulative stress in research animals: Telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context?

Telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context?

Stress impacts telomere dynamics.

Telomeres are DNA-protein complexes at the ends of chromosomes that control genomic integrity but appear to become shorter with age and stress. To test whether stress causes telomere attrition, we exposed the offspring of wild-caught house mice (Mus musculus) to stressful conditions and examined the changes in telomere length over six months. We found that females exposed to males and reproduct...

Is Telomere Length a Biomarker of Adaptive Response? Controversial Findings of NASA and Residents of High Background Radiation Areas

Telomere length and stability is a biomarker of aging, stress, and cancer. Shortening of telomeres and high level of DNA damages are known to be associated with aging. Telomere shortening normally occurs during cell division in most cells and when telomeres reach a critically short length, DNA damage signaling and cellular senescence can be triggered. The induction of an adaptive response by sp...

Studying telomeres in a longitudinal population based study.

Telomeres, the termini of linear chromosomes, consist of large but variable numbers of DNA oligomer repeats embedded in a nucleoprotein complex. In humans, telomere length (TL) is largely genetically determined but also featured by an age dependent attrition. TL has therefore been put forward as a marker for biological aging and was also reported to be associated with aging diseases such as car...

Telomere Attrition Due to Infection

BACKGROUND Telomeres--the terminal caps of chromosomes--become shorter as individuals age, and there is much interest in determining what causes telomere attrition since this process may play a role in biological aging. The leading hypothesis is that telomere attrition is due to inflammation, exposure to infectious agents, and other types of oxidative stress, which damage telomeres and impair t...