Interrelation of Telomeres with Transposable Elements in Aging

Abstract

The nature of telomere functioning, which affects the aging of the body, reflects global processes in the genome conditioned by the regulatory influence of transposable elements that are sequentially activated during ontogenesis. This is determined by the fact that centromeres and centromere proteins, telomeres and telomerases, introns and spliceosome components, transcription factors and their binding sites, noncoding RNAs and their targets in protein-coding gene sequences evolutionarily originated from transposable elements. The interrelation of these structural and functional elements of the genome is dynamically changing in individual development and depends on the nature of activations and transpositions of transposable elements. Each species is characterized by a specific set of transposable elements and associated tandem repeats, which reflect the epigenetic tuning of ontogenesis, mainly as a part of centromeres and telomeres; the impact on them is promising for the development of mechanisms of lifespan regulation. This is due to the ability of ribozymes and peptides to interact with specific sequences of DNA nucleotides, especially in tandem repeats. An important approach to the study of the relationship of transposons with telomeres, centromeres, and subtelomeric regions for the regulation of aging may be the study of the role of the peptides and microRNAs that unite them, the complex application of which has high potential for geroprotective effectiveness.