{"id":32432,"date":"2016-12-06T10:47:44","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T18:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/scientists-find-that-for-stem-cells-to-be-healthy-telomere-length-has-to-be-just-right"},"modified":"2017-06-04T13:59:53","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T20:59:53","slug":"scientists-find-that-for-stem-cells-to-be-healthy-telomere-length-has-to-be-just-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/scientists-find-that-for-stem-cells-to-be-healthy-telomere-length-has-to-be-just-right","title":{"rendered":"Scientists find that for stem cells to be healthy, telomere length has to be just right"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The Goldilocks zone with telomere length is the key.<\/p>\n

\n

Ever since researchers connected the shortening of telomeres\u2014the protective structures on the ends of chromosomes\u2014to aging and disease, the race has been on to understand the factors that govern telomere length. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute have found that a balance of elongation and trimming in stem cells results in telomeres that are, as Goldilocks would say, not too short and not too long, but just right.<\/p>\n

The finding, which appears in the December 5, 2016, issue of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology<\/i>, deepens our understanding of stem cell biology<\/a> and could help advance stem cell-based therapies, especially related to aging and regenerative medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis work shows that the optimal length for telomeres<\/a> is a carefully regulated range between two extremes,\u201d says Jan Karlseder, a professor in Salk\u2019s Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory and senior author of the work. \u201cIt was known that very short telomeres cause harm to a cell. But what was totally unexpected was our finding that damage also occurs when telomeres are very long.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Goldilocks zone with telomere length is the key. Ever since researchers connected the shortening of telomeres\u2014the protective structures on the ends of chromosomes\u2014to aging and disease, the race has been on to understand the factors that govern telomere length. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute have found that a balance of elongation and trimming [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32432"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65649,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32432\/revisions\/65649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}