What Do Your Telomeres Say About You?
09/05/11 14:43 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 14:43.
I was under the impression from the literature that as organisms get older, the length of their telomeres get shorter to the point where the cells can no longer undergo further rounds of division. With less capacity for cell division, this affects the body's ability to heal and regenerate and so impacts the life span of the organism. Presumably, those cells that must undergo increased rates of cell division would generally show faster rates of teleomere shortening. With a very active immune system, white blood cells should therefore have shorter teleomeres as these populations become expanded.
Perhaps in autoimmune disorders, there might be higher rates of immune cell teleomere shortening. However, psychologically stressful conditions and depression, as arise with many diseases such as cancer, may actually actually depress the immune system.
It would seem to be naive to relate telomere length to one's health status considering all of the variables including one's age. It would make a lot more sense to focus on better biomarkers of pathology such as stress protein levels and protein phosphorylation. At least these give better representations of acute conditions as opposed to events that may have come and gone decades before.
Link to the original blog post.
I was under the impression from the literature that as organisms get older, the length of their telomeres get shorter to the point where the cells can no longer undergo further rounds of division. With less capacity for cell division, this affects the body's ability to heal and regenerate and so impacts the life span of the organism. Presumably, those cells that must undergo increased rates of cell division would generally show faster rates of teleomere shortening. With a very active immune system, white blood cells should therefore have shorter teleomeres as these populations become expanded.
Perhaps in autoimmune disorders, there might be higher rates of immune cell teleomere shortening. However, psychologically stressful conditions and depression, as arise with many diseases such as cancer, may actually actually depress the immune system.
It would seem to be naive to relate telomere length to one's health status considering all of the variables including one's age. It would make a lot more sense to focus on better biomarkers of pathology such as stress protein levels and protein phosphorylation. At least these give better representations of acute conditions as opposed to events that may have come and gone decades before.
Link to the original blog post.