Abstract
Telomeres and telomerase provide a unique and important avenue of study in improving both life expectancy and quality of life due to their close association with aging and disease. While major advances in our understanding of these two biological mediators have characterized the last two decades, previous studies have been limited by the inability to affect change in real time within living cells. The last three years, however, have witnessed a huge step forward to overcome this limitation. The advent of the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated (CRISPR/Cas) system has led to a wide array of targeted genetic studies that are already being employed to modify telomeres and telomerase, as well as the genes that affect them. In this review, we analyze studies utilizing the technology to target and modify telomeres, telomerase, and their closely associated genes. We also discuss how these studies can provide insight into the biology and mechanisms that underlie aging, cancer, and other diseases.
Highlights
While each subunit is necessary for proper biological function, the catalytic portion that is known as telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT and hTERT in humans) is normally the limiting factor for telomerase activity and telomere elongation [10]
Labeling and the subsequent imaging of telomerase using the clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas system allows for an unprecedented ability to study the spatiotemporal dynamics of telomerase movements and recruitment
CRISPR-Cas provides a powerful tool for affecting these mutations in live cells and it allows for the modeling of rapidly dividing cell lines
Summary
Telomeres have been at the forefront of research in both aging and disease. Further study revealed a variety of possible sequences among clades of organisms [3] Within these clades, function is highly conserved, with telomeres being transferred from distantly related species that are able to maintain biological activity [4]. While each subunit is necessary for proper biological function, the catalytic portion that is known as telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT and hTERT in humans) is normally the limiting factor for telomerase activity and telomere elongation [10]. It is for this reason that a majority of research regarding telomere biology focuses on TERT. Sizes, but these trends carry across many other cancer types
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