Telomeres And Cancer: Elusive Telomere RNA Subunit Identified In
Single Cell Model
ScienceDaily (Jan. 5, 2008) — The Stowers Institute's Baumann Lab has
identified the long-sought telomerase RNA gene in a single-cell
research model. Chromosomes shorten with every cell division. In stem
cells and in cancer cells, this shortening is compensated by
telomerase, an enzyme that adds short repeat sequences to the ends of
chromosomes to replenish lost DNA. As telomerase is required for the
continued growth of most cancer cells, the enzyme is considered a
promising target for new anti-cancer drugs. A correlation between
telomere length and a variety of diseases has further intensified
interest in understanding telomerase and its regulation.
The RNA subunit of telomerase is of particular interest as it
represents one of the two core components of telomerase and provides
the template for the short repeats that are added to the ends of
chromosomes. The Baumann Lab is working to understand how telomerase
is assembled, how it is recruited to chromosome ends, and how its
activity is regulated. These efforts may shed light on the sometimes
surprising correlations between telomere shortening and stress,
smoking, obesity, and a variety of diseases including cancer and
coronary heart disease.
Telomerase RNA has been studied in a variety of simple model
organisms, but telomere maintenance turned out to be quite different
in these species compared to human cells. Recently, the Baumann Lab
used a biochemical approach to identify and clone the RNA subunit of
telomerase in Schizosaccharomyces pombe, or fission yeast.
"The identification of the fission yeast equivalent of the telomerase
RNA gene provides us with a critical tool to study telomerase in a
genetically tractable, single-cell organism with a telomere
maintenance machinery that shares many features with human cells,"
explained Peter Baumann, Ph.D., Assistant Investigator and senior
author on the paper. "We and others had been studying telomerase
activity, recruitment, and regulation for several years but the fact
that the RNA subunit was unknown in our fission yeast model system
severely limited our ability to make progress."
Now that the missing component of the model system has been
identified, the Baumann Lab's structural and functional studies are
expected to progress rapidly. The lab is now turning its attention to
how and where telomerase is assembled from its components in the cell
and what processing it must undergo to become active.
The full findings have been posted to the website of the journal
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology and will appear in a future
print edition.
Additional contributing authors from the Stowers Institute include
Jessica Leonardi, formerly a Research Technician I; Jessica Box,
Research Technician I; and Jeremy Bunch, Research Technician III.
Dr. Baumann also is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at The University of Kansas Medical
School of Medicine and a Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences.
Adapted from materials provided by Stowers Institute for Medical
Research, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of
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MLA Stowers Institute for Medical Research (2008, January 5).
Telomeres And Cancer: Elusive Telomere RNA Subunit Identified In
Single Cell Model. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 29, 2008, from
http://www.scienced
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