Science Sub-Journal: Heavy! A new system can accurately analyze chromosome telomeres in 3 hours!

September 22, 2020 // -- Scientists from the National University of Singapore and other institutions have developed a new system that can accurately analyze telomeres in three hours in a study published in the international journal Science Advances entitled "Massively parallel single-product telomere with digital real-time PCR".
We all know that plastic caps at the end of shoelaces prevent premature wear of shoelaces, while telomeres are duplicate DNA sequences located at the end of chromosomes that also have similar functions as shoelaces plastic caps, which protect genetic material from genomic instability, helping to prevent cancer and regulate the body's aging process.
Photo Source: The Conversation Each time our body's cells divide, the telomeres shorten, like the cell's molecular clock, as they age, and accurate measurements of the number and length of these telomeres can provide researchers with important information about whether the cells are in a normal aging state, or abnormality (suggesting a risk of cancer).
To develop an innovative way to diagnose telomere anomalies, researchers have developed a new method that accurately determines the absolute length of a single telomere in less than three hours, a unique telomere analysis method that processes up to 48 samples from trace amounts of DNA.
researcher Professor Chew said: 'Our innovative technology can dramatically speed up our diagnosis while also providing critical telomere information for age-related diseases and cancers, a reliable tool for clinically accurate analysis of telomere properties or more accurate treatment for patients.'
traditional telomere determination methods in clinical practice often require skilled operators, and these methods also lack precise information on the length and number of individual telomeres required to accurately diagnose or determine telomere abnormalities.
to overcome the major technical hurdles encountered in telomere analysis, the researchers developed a unique analytical system called STAR, a single telomere absolute length rapid determination technology (STAR assay, Single Telomere Absolute-length Rapid Assay).
Based on this system, the researchers first distributed individual telomere analyses into thousands of nano chambers of microflower chips, followed by PCR reactions of individual telomere molecules in large-scale parallel ways in all chambers, so that PCR amplification dynamics in each nano chamber can react to the number of repetitions of telomeres, which are directly related to the length of individual telomere molecules.
Using new methods developed by researchers, they can accurately determine the maintenance mechanism of telomeres in cancer cells and obtain high levels of detail during assays, and cancer patients activated by telomere replacement extension (ALT) pathways tend to perform poorly in prognosis, such as in patients with specific sarcoma and glioma diseases, which are associated with higher-than-average telomere lengths and higher proportions of critical short telomeres, in addition to extra copies of telomere molecules in cancer cells.
To test the new method, the researchers validated it with a joint study, since telomere-altering mechanisms such as ALT are often better studied in tumors such as sarcoma and neurological tumors, which are more prevalent in children, and the researchers note that STAR testing can effectively diagnose ALT status in children with neuroblastoma and serve as a prognostic indicator for patients with such cancers.
Photo Source: National University of Singapore Cancer Cells use a modified mechanism to abnormally modify and maintain the length of telomeres as a means of continuous growth, and mechanisms such as ALT can be used by mechanisms such as neuroblastoma, a cancer that originates in multiple nerve parts of the body and is the most common solid malignancies in children Professor Amos Loh, a researcher, said that telomere abnormalities, such as ALT, had previously been rarely known and that recent researchers had found that they could be used as a risk marker to indicate neuroblastoma, and that because patients with neuroblastomas with telomere abnormalities tend to have poor prognosis, the new method of analyzing telomeres could help researchers quickly identify ALT pathways in the patient's body to better analyze the patient's prognosis.
the researchers point out that the combination of rapid workflow, scalability, and single-molecule resolution allows the new system to use the distribution of telomere lengths as a biomarker to indicate disease progression, which is critical to diagnosing and maintaining telomere mechanisms on a clinical time scale and determining personalized treatment or prevention strategies for patients;
() References: Yongqiang Luo, Ramya Viswanathan, Manoor Prakash Hande, et al. Massively parallel single-containing telomere length measurement with digital real-time PCR, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126 / sciadv.abb7944 (2) Researchers develop new system to accurate conduct telomere profiling in less than 3 hoursby National University of Singapore.