Abstract
The majority of human telomere length studies have focused on the overall length of telomeres within a cell. In fact, very few studies have examined telomere length for individual chromosome arms. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between chromosome arm size and the relative length of the associated telomere. Quantitative Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (Q-FISH) was used to measure the relative telomere length of each chromosome arm in metaphases from cultured lymphocytes of 17 individuals. A statistically significant positive correlation (r = 0.6) was found between telomere length and the size of the associated chromosome arm, which was estimated based on megabase pair measurements from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/mapview/.
Highlights
The human telomere is a highly repetitive GC rich protective structure located at the terminal regions of the chromosomes
Graakjaer and colleagues [6,7,8] had found that human telomere length correlated well with chromosome length but did not have as strong a correlation with individual chromosome arm size
Telomere length as Relative Telomere Length Units (RTLU) and chromosome arm length in Mb was compared for each individual in our study to determine if the pattern profile showed consistency between individuals (Table 1)
Summary
The human telomere is a highly repetitive GC rich protective structure located at the terminal regions of the chromosomes. Only a few studies have examined the length of telomeres for individual chromosome arms in humans. Lansdorp and colleagues [4] had examined the telomere length of human chromosomes in cells from different tissues and found that sister chromatid telomere length was similar; the distribution of telomere length between chromosomes was not random. Martens and colleagues [5] found that there was a significant difference between the telomere length of individual chromosome arms, with a weak positive correlation between the length of chromosome arms and the corresponding telomeres. Graakjaer and colleagues [6,7,8] had found that human telomere length correlated well with chromosome length but did not have as strong a correlation with individual chromosome arm size
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