Re: Telomeres and stuff

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon May 01 2000 - 10:15:42 MDT


On Mon, 1 May 2000, John Clark wrote:

>
> I know, maybe that has something to do with the fact that mice as a species
> tend have very long telomeres, or maybe not. I did hear a rumor that cloned
> mice with unusually short telomeres lived as long as normal animals but
> were sterile, I don't know if it's true. Anybody know anything?

Relevent articles from PubMed would seem to be:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10648922&dopt=Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10625923&dopt=Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve?db=PubMed?list_uids=10089885?dopt=Abstract
                       
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve?db=PubMed?list_uids=9689036?dopt=Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10357808&dopt=Abstract

In particular:
 "Interestingly, these mice could be bred for only four generations
  and the survival of late generation mTR-/- mice decreased dramatically
  with age as compared with their wild-type counterparts. Fifty percent
  of the generation 4 mice die at only 5 months of age. This decreased
  viability with age in the late generation mice is coincident with telomere
  shortening, sterility, splenic atrophy, reduced proliferative capacity
  of B and T cells, abnormal hematology and atrophy of the small intestine.
  These results indicate that telomere shortening in mTR-/- mice leads to
  progressive loss of organismal viability."

I note the pathologies occur primarily in tissues with dividing cells!

[Note: the NCBI PubMed abstract server seems down right now, so you may
want to try it later.]

If the URL's don't work, the query I did was "telomerase mice aging".

Robert



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