The links between telomerase and aging

Telomerase helps maintain telomere length in our cells, influences how our bodies age, and why we develop diseases like cancer. If cells had enough telomerase, telomeres might not shorten at all. But in most somatic cells, it’s present in very low amounts — only enough to slow the telomere shortening down.

This is part of a short series of videos where we explore telomeres, telomere length and telomerase, as well as the impacts they have on our health.

Chapters:
00:00 What is telomerase?
00:25 What happens when telomeres are too short?
00:38 How does telomerase work?
01:23 How does telomerase affect cancer risk and aging?

References
1. Aubert G, Lansdorp PM. Telomeres and aging. Physiol Rev. 2008;88(2):557-579. doi:10.1152/physrev.00026.2007.
2. Barthel, F.P., Wei, W., Tang, M., Martinez-Ledesma, E., Hu, X., Amin, S.B., Akdemir, K.C., Seth, S., Song, X., Wang, Q., et al. (2017). Systematic analysis of telomere length and somatic alterations in 31 cancer types. Nat Genet 49, 349-357.
3. Blasco, M. A. et al. Telomere shortening and tumor formation by mouse cells lacking telomerase RNA. Cell 91, 25-34 (1997).