BACKGROUND

Eukaryotic telomeres possess arrays of tandem G-rich repeats on the strand that forms the 3'-end of the chromosome (1,2). These repeats, known as telomeres, are believed to play a critical role in avoiding the loss of internal genes by stabilizing the ends of chromosomes during replication. In normal somatic cells, telomere length is progressively reduced with each cellular division. This reduction in length might be an important control mechanism as it has been found that immortalized cells contain telomeres which no longer shorten with increased cell division.

The telomerase enzyme, a riboprotein which is believed to maintain the telomere length, is found in cells concomitant with their conversion to uncontrolled growth. Long and stable telomere lengths are found in normal germ cells which must maintain full chromosomal lengths from generation to generation. Normal primitive stem cells and inflammatory cells stimulated to proliferate tend to have some telomerase activity which maintains lengthier telomeres even through many cell divisions.

The correlation between normal cell function and proper cellular control over telomere length, makes the accurate measurement of length an important goal. PharMingen's new TeloQuant™ kit, Catalog #45228K, is the only commercially available assay system for measuring telomere length in cells and tissue samples. The kit contains sufficient reagents for 50 different samples.

* Licensed from Geron Corporation, Patent Pending.

REFERENCES
1. Blackburn, E.H. and Gall, J.G. (1978) A tandemly repeated sequence at the termini of the extra chromosomal RNA genes in Tetrahymena. J. Mol. Biol. 120:33-53.
2. Zakian, V. A (1995) Telomeres: Beginning to understand the end. Science 270: 1601-1607.

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