GL-science

Telomeres are structures that cap the ends of chromosomes. They are made up of TTAGGG repeats, these repeats can be up to 20kb long (Britt-Compton et al, 2006). The purpose of telomeres is to act as buffers to protect important segments of DNA from being lost due to the inability of DNA polymerase to replicate all the way to the end of the chromosome. This inability was described by Alexei Olovnikov and James Watson as the “end replication problem” in 1971. Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction

Telomeres are highly repetitive DNA sequences that are located at the ends of linear chromosome. Their main function is to act as disposable buffers. They contain the repetitive sequences (TTAGGG). Each time a linear chromosome divides the chromosome loses roughly 50-100bp of DNA, and if it wasn’t for telomeres this would lead to the rapid loss of important genetic material. Read the rest of this entry »