Telomere size does matter, but why?

July 30, 2019 / BIOON / - a more novel study from the child health checkpoint is the measurement of "telomeres" - tiny caps on each strand of our DNA that protect the ends of our chromosomes Under the leadership of the Murdoch children's Institute, child health checkpoints are a one-time physical examination of 1800 children and their parents in 30 towns in Australia Photo source: John Nguyen, lead researcher of pd-nasa and pd-usgov-nasa, said that healthy telomeres are long and strong, short and worn telomeres are signs of aging, related to diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease Each time a cell divides into two, the telomere shortens, which happens with cell growth and body maintenance You can compare telomeres to little plastic bands at the end of shoelaces Once the laces wear out, your laces start to wear "When telomeres erode to a very short length, they cause cell death "Nguyen extracted DNA from blood samples from 1200 children and their parents and measured telomere length "We tried to investigate whether telomere length is primarily genetic or more influenced by lifestyle," Nguyen said The team collected one of Australia's largest sets of telomere length data "Nguyen said little is known about the telomere length of healthy children, and the new study, published in BMJ open, will be useful to researchers around the world and allow for international population comparisons Unsurprisingly, adults have shorter telomeres than children because they are older and wear more We did find some similarities in telomere length between children and parents Nguyen said the length of children's telomeres appears to be partly a genetic result - more pronounced in fathers than mothers, but also influenced by environmental factors "We still have a lot of work to do to completely unravel the complex genetic pattern of telomere length and the link between telomere shortening and disease," Nguyen said "Reference: size does matter when it comes to hotels