Background It is hypothesized that environmental exposures and behaviour influence telomere length, an indicator of cellular ageing. We systematically associated 461 indicators of environmental exposures, physiology and self-reported behaviour with telomere length in data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) in 1999-2002. Further, we tested whether factors ident...

Telomere is a region of repetitive DNA located at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes, which protect genetic material from degradation during cellular replication. Telomere length in individuals is highly variable, and studies have shown that shortened telomeres are associated with poor prognoses in many diseases, including cancers and other diseases that disproportionately affect BangladeshiAme...

BACKGROUND Telomere dysfunction is involved in the development of breast cancer and very short telomeres are frequent genetic alterations in breast tumors. However, the influence of telomere lengths of specific chromosomal arms on the breast cancer risk is unknown. METHODS We conducted a case-control study of breast cancer to examine the associations of the telomere length on chromosome 9 sho...

Although length of the telomeric DNA tract varies widely across evolution, a species-specific set point is established and maintained by unknown mechanisms. To investigate how telomere length is controlled in Arabidopsis thaliana, we analyzed bulk telomere length in 14 wild-type accessions. We found that telomere tracts in Arabidopsis are fairly uniformly distributed throughout a size range of ...

Sexual transmission of human papillomavirus (HPV), particularly HPV16, has been associated with an increasing incidence of oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPC). Telomere shortening results in chromosomal instability, subsequently leading to cancer development. Given that HPV16 can affect telomerase activity and telomere length, we conjectured that telomere length in peripheral blood lymp...

OBJECTIVE Abuse victimization in childhood is associated with a variety of age-related cardiometabolic diseases, but the mechanisms remain unknown. Telomeres, which form the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes, have been proposed as measures of biological age, and a growing body of research suggests that telomere attrition may help to explain relationships between stress and cardiometabo...

Telomeres, nucleoprotein complexes at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes, are 10-12 kbp in length in somatic cells, but as small as 1-2 kbp in rapidly growing cancer cells. Southern blot analysis is currently the standard method for the measurement of telomere length. However, accurate determinations are not possible when DNA is broken or scant. To avoid these problems, a slot blot assay that q...

Terminal restriction fragment analysis is the only method currently available for measuring telomere length in Caenorhabditis elegans. Its limitations include low sensitivity and interference by the presence of interstitial telomeric sequences in the C.elegans genome. Here we report the adaptation of single telomere length analysis (STELA) to measure the length of telomeric repeats on the left ...

Deficiencies in folate (FOL) and vitamin B12 (B12) result in increased chromosomal aberrations, a validated biomarker of cancer risk. Telomeres, the regions of DNA that cap the ends of each chromosome, are critical for maintaining chromosomal stability but the impact of micronutrients on telomere structure and function remains unclear. We hypothesized that telomere length maintenance might be c...

Telomeres, the TTAGGG tandem repeats at the ends of chromosomes, become progressively shortened with each replication of cultured human somatic cells (reviewed in Wong and Collins (Wong & Collins 2003)) until a critical length is achieved, at which point the cell enters replicative senescence. This situation can be reversed by the enzyme named telomerase that is responsible for Telomere Length ...