Telomere in ageing
The effect of telomere on aging
In the process of cell division, the telomere at the top of the chromosome of normal cells will become irreversibly shorter, so the length of telomere is relatively related to the number of cell divisions and the length of cell life cycle. At present, scholars believe that the true physiological age of human beings can be obtained by measuring the length of cell terminal granules, The length of cell telomere can be said to be a biomarker of human age.
The protective sleeve of telomere will become shorter with each cell division. When it is too short to be shorter, it will lose the function of protecting chromosomes and stop the growth and operation of cells, that is, aging.
For example, a person is fifty years old since birth, and by measuring the length of telomere in white blood cells, the white blood cells show that the age is forty years old, then compared with people of the same age, he is a comparison. Healthy and energetic young people.
Telomere detection method
- qPCR
- TRF
- flow-FISH
│The length of telomere is different in nature and can be changed the day after tomorrow│
Although the speed of physiological aging is different for each person, some people have a very slow rate of telomere shortening, so they are relatively healthy and energetic. This is determined by innate factors. However, studies have found that the length of telomeres will be affected by acquired changes. Such as stress, living environment, living habits, etc. may change the length of telomere.
We can prevent the shortening of telomeres and the acceleration of cell aging through decompression life, healthy diet, good sleep, moderate exercise, improvement of living habits, and preventive medicine, so that you can move towards a healthy, longevity and happy future!
Telomere length has been proven to be changeable (sliding can understand the changes before and after)
Another aging test indicator – mitochondrial energy performance has been proven to be changeable (sliding can understand the changes before and after)
Telomerase in cancer
The effect of telomerase on cancer
Telomerase activity regulation mechanism
- Telomerase is specific to the regulatory mechanism of telomeres in different cells.
- Cells self-renewal and proliferation regulation can regulate the activity of telomerase. For example, the activity of telomerase in stem cells and tumor cells is generally higher than that in somatic cells. External signals can also activate telomerase activity, so that somatic cells exhibit the characteristics of infinite proliferation of cancer cells.
- Regulation of several regulatory points in the cell cycle is likely to be the underlying factor determining telomerase activity.
The prospect of clinical application of telomerase
●Application in tumor treatment
Since telomerase is hardly expressed in normal somatic cells and is expressed in a large amount in tumor cells, it is used as the target of tumor therapy to directly inhibit its activity or operate at the gene level, to inhibitors have higher specificity and fewer side effects than traditional cancer chemotherapy and gene therapy, and have a wider range of applications, and are likely to have inhibitory effects on advanced metastatic tumors.
●Application in cancer diagnosis and prognosis evaluation
In tumor diagnosis, the variation of telomerase activity can often be detected in early tumor cells, and the high expression of telomerase can be detected in metastatic cancer cells. Therefore, it is of great significance for the early diagnosis of cancer. At the same time, understanding the structure, function and activity regulation factors of telomerase will also help to improve the understanding of the mechanism of tumorigenesis and provide new ideas for the treatment of cancer.
臺灣端粒檢測及應用中心 