A Review of Current Understanding of Telomeres

The Scientist – Telomeres have been linked to numerous diseases over the years, but how exactly short telomeres cause diseases and how medicine can prevent telomere erosion are still up for debate.

The ends of linear chromosomes have attracted serious scientific study—and Nobel Prizes—since the early 20th century. Called telomeres, these ends serve to protect the coding DNA of the genome. When a cell’s telomeres shorten to critical lengths, the cell senesces. Thus, telomeres dictate a cell’s life span—unless something goes wrong. Work over the past several decades has revealed an active, though limited, mechanism for the normal enzymatic repair of telomere loss in certain proliferative cells. Telomere lengthening in cancer cells, however, confers an abnormal proliferative ability.

In addition to cancer, telomeres have been found to be involved in numerous other diseases, including liver dysfunction and aplastic anemia, a condition in which the bone marrow does not produce a sufficient supply of new blood cells.2 Inadequate telomere repair and accelerated telomere attrition can be molecular causes of these diseases, and targeting these processes may lead to the development of novel therapies.

Telomeres consist of hexameric nucleotide sequences (TTAGGG in humans) that are repeated hundreds to thousands of times at each extremity of each chromosome. Telomeric DNA is coated by a group of proteins, collectively termed shelterin, which serves to protect telomere structure.

When telomeres reach critically short lengths, most cells either stop dividing or die. In many cancers, however, telomerase is upregulated or the ALT pathway is activated, resulting in abnormal telomere lengthening and proliferative growth. Because of this link between telomeres and cancer, researchers are actively investigating telomerase (TERT) as a target for cancer therapeutics, with several clinical trials ongoing.

* Short leukocyte telomeres have been associated with increased risk of all cancers and of cancer fatalities.

• Patients with dyskeratosis congenita, an inherited bone marrow failure disease characterized by telomerase dysfunction, have a 1000-fold risk of tongue cancer and about 100-fold risk of acute myeloid leukemia.

Telomere Basics

Telomeres and their repair are important in the growing field of regenerative medicine. Dolly the sheep had chromosomes with shorter telomeres probably because she was cloned from an adult mammary gland cell. This may have contributed to Dolly’s illnesses, especially her progressive lung disease. Embryonic stem cells, however, express telomerase and are able to maintain their telomere lengths despite numerous cell divisions. More recently, reprogramming mature adult skin cells to the pluripotent state has been achieved with introduction of just a few defined nuclear factors. During the process of reverting cells to a more immature and pluripotent state, the reprogrammed cells’ telomeres are highly elongated. In the first steps of reprogramming and likely in the early stages of embryogenesis, cells can elongate, and thus “rejuvenate,” their telomeres. Since telomere shortening limits cell proliferation, mechanisms that can elongate telomeres are highly desirable for effective regenerative medicine.

Telomeres and telomere repair are basic molecular processes in cells possessing linear DNA chromosomes. Accelerated telomere attrition due to genetic defects in telomerase and in the shelterin protein genes is etiologic in several human diseases not previously considered related in the clinic. These include aplastic anemia, pulmonary fibrosis, and hepatic cirrhosis. The telomeropathies, especially in their milder and more chronic forms, may not be rare and almost certainly are often unrecognized by physicians. The importance of telomere repair in tissues under regenerative stress is of special interest, particularly in the reactive responses of fibrogenesis in the liver and the lungs. The maintenance of adequate telomere lengths also may be important in embryonic and adult stem cells to enable proliferation while preventing chromosome instability, thus avoiding potential malignant transformation. Also of interest is the connection linking telomere attrition and chronic inflammation to cancer and other diseases

There is still much to be learned about how telomerase gene mutations cause disease, why they only affect certain organs, and how telomeres can be targeted for therapies. Both the genetic regulation of telomerase expression and the effect of an organism’s environment on telomere attrition are poorly understood. Drugs or hormones that might modulate telomerase expression and maintain or elongate telomeres would be appealing in the treatment of the telomeropathies and in conditions in which telomere attrition has known medical consequences. Whether telomere shortening mediates human aging—and conversely, whether telomere elongation may reverse aging or prevent age-related diseases—are still controversial issues.

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