PARIS: Elated scientists announced on Wednesday the completion of a 20-year quest to map the complex enzyme thought to forestall ageing by repairing the tips of chromosomes in plants and animals, including humans.
Decoding the architecture of the enzyme, called telomerase, could lead to drugs that slow or block the ageing process, along with new treatments for cancer, they reported in the journal Nature. "It has been a long time coming," lead investigator Kathleen Collins, a molecular biologist at the University of California in Berkley, said in a statement.
"Our findings provide a structural framework for understanding human telomerase disease mutations, and represent an important step towards telomerase-related clinical therapeutics." Part protein and part RNA -- genetic material that relays instructions for building proteins -- telomerase acts on microscopic sheaths, known as telomeres, that cover the tips of the chromosomes found inside all cells.
In humans, each cell contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, including one pair of sex chromosomes -- the "X" and "Y" -- that differ between males and females. Australian-American biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering telomeres and their protective function in the 1970s, likened them to the tiny plastic caps that keep shoelaces from fraying.
Russia has said from the outset that it believes Ukraine was linked to the attack
The bill would give mentally competent adults who have been diagnosed with a terminal condition
Leftist opposition parties submitted a censure motion against the conservative government this week
The ministry alleged that the driver lost control and collided with barriers on the bridge
Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has held up a bill for months that would supply $60 billion in military and financial...
The results are likely to be shaped in part by economic woes driven by rampant inflation