Unexpected Indication
Like a burly bouncer with a hidden talent for ballet, there’s more to telomeres than meets the eye. They are repeating sections of DNA that sit at the end of strands, protecting the inner regions by degrading a little each time a cell replicates. They eventually diminish sufficiently to cause cell damage as we age. It was recently discovered that, counter to previous beliefs, these lengths of DNA can code for two small proteins, VR and GL. Researchers synthesised these to study their impacts, and then found them more frequently in cancer cells (pictured, VR in green, human cancer cells in red) and in people with telomere-related diseases. A blood test for these proteins might be a route to early cancer diagnosis, and as the levels rise over time, the potent proteins might be an indicator of a person’s biological age (a more significant indicator of health than chronological age).
Written by Anthony Lewis
Image from work by Taghreed M. Al-Turki and Jack D. Griffith
Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Image copyright held by the original authors
Research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), September 2023
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