Significance Telomeres play an important role in aging, and having relatively short telomeres is associated with increased risk of death humans other animals. Telomere length influenced by both genetic environmental factors, which could potentially drive the positive association survival. We used lifelong telomere measurements from a population wild sheep to disentangle this relationship. Our a...

Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), which is known to be a preleukemic state, is a heterogeneous entity characterized by ineffective hematopoiesis and dysplastic morphological features. Most MDS patients show erosive telomeric repeats (TTAGGG)(n), without up-regulation of telomerase activity, suggesting that telomere shortening may be linked to cellular senescence in MDS. We measured telomere lengt...

ObjectiveTo test the hypothesis that telomere shortening and/or loss are risk factors for infertility.DesignRetrospective analysis of status in patients with infertility using conventional cytogenetic data collected prospectively.SettingAcademic centers.Patient(s)Cytogenetic slides cultured peripheral lymphocytes from 50 undergoing fertility treatment and 150 healthy donors, including 100 donor...

Hematopoietic reconstitution after stem cell transplantation requires excessive replicative activity because of the limited number of stem cells that are used for transplantation. Telomere shortening has been detected in hematopoietic cells after bone marrow transplantation. This has been thought to result from excessive replication of the stem cells, with putative concomitant reduction of thei...

neuroblastoma, one of the common malignant childhood tumors, arises from neuroblast cells derived from theneural crest and destined for the adrenal medulla and the sympathetic nervous system and shows remarkable biologicalheterogeneity, resulting in favorable or unfavorable outcomes. some tumors make rapid progress with a fataloutcome. in other instances, the tumors regress spontaneously in inf...

Telomere reprogramming and silencing of exogenous genes have been demonstrated in mouse and human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). Pigs have the potential to provide xenotransplant for humans, and to model and test human diseases. We investigated the telomere length and maintenance in porcine iPS cells generated and cultured under various conditions. Telomere lengths vary among diffe...

Human telomere length, as expressed in leukocytes, is strongly fashioned by heritability. A number of genes that explain some of the inter-individual variation in leukocyte telomere length have already been identified. Leukocyte telomere length is longer in women than in men and in African Americans than in whites of european descent. in addition, offspring of older fathers display a longer leu...

Human chromosome ends are protected with kilobases repeats of TTAGGG. Telomere DNA shortens at replication. This shortening in most tumor cells is compensated by telomerase that adds telomere repeats to the 3' end of the G-rich telomere strand. Four TTAGGG repeats can fold into G-quadruplex that is a poor substrate for telomerase. This property has been suggested to regulate telomerase activity...

Telomeres are conserved DNA-protein structures at the termini of eukaryotic chromosomes which contribute to maintenance of genome integrity, and their shortening leads to cell senescence, with negative consequences for organismal functions. Because telomere erosion is influenced by extrinsic and endogenous factors, telomere dynamics may provide a mechanistic basis for evolutionary and physiolog...

Telomeres are specialized nucleoprotein caps that protect chromosome ends assuring cell division. Single-cell telomere quantification in animals established a critical role for telomerase in stem cells, yet, in plants, telomere-length quantification has been reported only at the organ level. Here, a quantitative analysis of telomere length of single cells in Arabidopsis root apex uncovered a he...