Samani now plans to investigate how the variant is making telomeres shorter. "It could be regulating TERC, but that's got to be shown in further studies," he says. People carrying the variant might further accelerate the biological aging process if they smoke, are obese or don't exercise—all of which are bad news for telomeres.

9 Comments

1. 1. j3gibson 03:42 PM 2/8/10

   this is very interesting. I wonder if the gene is more affected by sunlight exposure or free radiacals since the appearance of someone's skin is the biggest indicator of age.

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2. 2. jonitiranes 05:54 PM 2/8/10

   Unless it is UV rays, I am inclined to think that sunlight has no significant effect on telomeres. Skin conditioned by sunlight is a phenotypical change.

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3. 3. Crucialitis 08:17 AM 2/9/10

   What if telomeres have encoding that tells polymerase how many mistakes it can make?

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4. 4. talslsels 10:47 AM 2/9/10

   I'm not sure if it's me who can't understand it.
   "Individuals carrying the variant had shorter telomeres, stretches of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that protect them from daily wearand also aging"
   From here, it says shorter telomeres tend to protect people from getting old.
   While in that content, it says people have one copy of that genetic variant that is believed to have relation to a shorter telomere would make people look on average 3 to 4 years older.
   Can you really afford a mistake that clear in the title??

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5. 5. sparcboy 12:34 PM 2/9/10

   OK, so what can a person do or not do in order to stabilize the telomeres and prevent them from breaking down, i.e. what should we do or not do in relation to telomeres to prolong health and life?

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6. 6. William O'Connor 03:17 PM 2/9/10

   What causes telomeres to shorten and to break off?

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7. 7. kmoisse in reply to talslsels 06:15 PM 2/9/10

   The telomeres are stretches of DNA that protect the chromosomes. As they get shorter, they offer less protection to our genetic material. This, the researchers say, is what underlies biological aging.

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8. 8. fisixisfun 04:24 AM 2/10/10

   If I remember my high school IB Biology correctly, the reason telomeres affect aging is that DNA can only be copied in the 5'-->3' direction (or the reverse, my mind has been known to flip things), and when copying in the opposite direction it has to put down a lot of initiator enzymes, with nucleotides then being added behind them. Imagine a zipper unzipping. On one side, the links are in the right order, so only one initiator is needed, then the nucleotides just add on, following the zipper. But on the other side they are going the wrong way, so initiators must be placed right behind the zipper and then fill in backwards, and once more space opens up, another initiator gets put down. When the initiators are removed, the DNA that they covered isn't replaced, so that part is lost, and the telomeres basically act as disposable DNA that gets covered instead of the important stuff. Once the telomeres are gone, important DNA starts being covered, and things start to break down. I could be wrong about this though, DNA replication is not my strong suit.

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9. 9. pf1624@yahoo.com.hk 05:38 AM 2/10/10

   There is still some genes in which their functions are not understood yet. Maybe the genetic variant linked could contribute to the shortening of telomeres as well as inheritable diseases associated on cardiology.

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