Telomeres, cell life and RNA
Recently a couple of studies on telomeres have been published. Telomeres are fragments of DNA located at the ends of chromosomes that limit the life of cells: each time the cell is separated, the telomere decreases and, the shorter the telomere, the cell is closer to death.
Researchers at Cardiff University in Britain have studied the relationship between cell life and telomere length, clarifying the minimum number of base pairs the telomere should have to make the cell healthy. The limit is to have six pairs of bases repeated 12.8 times; if the telomere has less than that, errors occur in cell distribution. These errors cause cell death or the appearance of cancer mutations.
At the Experimental Cancer Research Institute in Switzerland, there has been an unexpected discovery that telomeres have information for RNA production. The DNA sequence of telomeres has no gender, so it was not expected. Now, however, after demonstrating that telomeres have to do with RNA production, they begin to investigate the function of this RNA. In fact, researchers believe that it may have importance in the genesis of cancer.
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