Telomeres, the genetic segments that appear at a chromosome'sends, have been known since the 1930s to have special propertiesthat protect these ends. They were first isolated in the 1970sand 1980s and shown to be made up of DNA repeats that, whentransferred to the ends of artificial chromosomes in yeast,could protect them from degradation. At the same time, a newlydiscovered enzyme called telomerase was found to add telomererepeats to the ends of chromosomes with the use of a dedicatedRNA template. This mechanism of telomere addition by telomerasesolved the "end-replication problem" the . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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Dr. Artandi is an assistant professor of hematology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA.
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