Telomeres are the green "caps" on the ends of the chromosome
Elizabeth Blackburn, a UCSF scientist who won a Nobel Prize this year, once likened telomeres to the plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces.
While the plastic ends of a shoelace protect the ends of the lace and make using them easier, if you lose the tip your laces will still work. Telomeres protect the ends of your chromosomes; however, without them the cells in your body cannot replicate. If they cannot divide, your tissues die.
Telomeres are important in research on aging to learn why cells have replication limits. Each time a cell divides it loses a bit of the telomeres on the ends of the cell and when the telomere shortens enough, the cell can no longer replicate. They are important to research on cancer to understand why some cells can replicate longer and faster than usual. Cancer cells seem to have longer telomeres than normal cells.
Here are two You Tube selections to help you understand the science of telomeres.
The first is a 2-minute animation of how the telomeres function during cellular division.
The second is a one-hour talk by Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn.
Related article
Elizabeth Blackburn from UCSF wins Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
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