Tag Archives: telomerase

Role of gene mutations involved in more than 75 percent of glioblastomas, melanomas

The research is published this month in the online journal PLOS ONE and is authored by Brad Chaires, Ph.D., John Trent, Ph.D., Robert Gray, William Dean, Ph.D., Robert Buscaglia, Shelia Thomas and Donald Miller, M.D., Ph.D. Telomerase is an enzyme largely responsible for the promotion of cell division. Within DNA, telomerase activation is a critical step for human carcinogenesis through the maintenance of telomeres. …

New role for cell dark matter in genome integrity

Each time a cell divides, chromosomes, the long DNA molecules that encode our genes, must be duplicated. But the machinery that does this replication is imperfect, failing to perform duplication all the way to the ends of chromosomes. How living cells divide and how this process is accurately achieved are among the deepest questions scientists have been addressing for decades. …

Protein ‘motif’ crucial to telomerase activity

Their findings are published in the October 8 issue of the journal Structure, available online now. "Telomerase is a unique protein-RNA complex where the protein subunit uses its RNA component as a template to add identical fragments of DNA to the end of chromosomes," said Emmanuel Skordalakes, Ph.D., associate professor in the Gene Expression and Regulation program of Wistar’s NCI-designated Cancer Center. …