Figure 1: The products of two genes are required to reconstitute basic telomerase activity; the RNA component, hTR, which includes the template for synthesis of telomere DNA, and the protein ...

We expressed this mutant (DN-hTERT) ectopically in human immortalized cells and cancer cells to assess the biochemical and physiological effects of telomerase inhibition on cellular immortality ...

"Immortality might be much more common than ... Harvard geneticists "switched on" the telomerase in mice, and found that they lived 40% longer. That's the equivalent of adding an additional ...

Cancer cells, however, usually find a way to turn telomerase back on, achieving a dangerous immortality. In fact, the enzyme is overactive in as many as 90 percent of human tumors. Researchers are ...