What is the relation between telomere and cancer? I am not a medical student, just curious. Can you explain it to me in layman’s terms?
It appears that extremely long telomeres can make cancer cells immortal. Your body has a natural method of lengthening short telomeres. So instead of trying to unnaturally lengthen telomeres, we should focus on giving the body what it needs to maintain the Goldilocks telomere length.Here are some examples of how telomeres relate to cancer and disease.Diseases related with short telomeresPeople suffering from cardiomyopathy, a form of heart disease, have (13) abnormally short in their heart muscle cells.Muscular dystrophy, when stem cells in the muscle are unable to regenerate new muscle, is (14) due to shortened telomeresType 2 diabetes is associated with DNA damage which is hypothesized (15) to be the result of telomere shortening.Osteoporosis is (16) associated with shorter telomeres.Measuring telomere length can help (17) with treatment decisions for patients with certain types of bone marrow dysfunction.In a study of 143 individuals over 60, those with shorter telomeres were three times more likely to die (18) from heart disease.Diseases related with extremely long telomeresAbnormally active telomerase can protect (19) melanoma thereby making it difficult to treat.Telomeres are (20) a possible “survival advantage survival advantage for cancer cells, allowing multiple cell divisions leading to high cancer mortality.”Longer than normal telomeres are (21) associated with an increased cancer risk,Researches have found (22) that “telomeres are at the origin of pulmonary fibrosis. This is the first time that telomere damage has been identified as a cause of the disease”.Can Telomeres Be Regrown?Telomeres can be regrown. Recently, researches have discovered that an RNA molecule called TERRA helps (23) to ensure that extremely short (or damaged ) telomeres get fixed again. At the site of long telomeres, TERRA is quickly removed by the proteins Rat1 and RNase H2. But these proteins are absent at short telomeres. Thereby, this mechanism allows TERRA to repair shortened telomeres so that cell can survive and keep dividing.Read the entire article How to Regrow Telomeres Naturally.
Why are embryonic stem cells currently preferred to adult stem cells for research purposes?
Embryonic stem cells are pleuripotent and can differentiate into all cell types excluding the cells that form the extraembryonic membrane. Adult stem cells are multipotent and can differentiate into their specific cell types such as hematopoietic stem cells differentiating into red blood cells and white blood cells. Since potential for differentiating is higher in embryonic stem cells as compared to adult stem cells, it is more favourable to do research with them. Also, embryonic stem cells can proliferate more than adult stem cells which have a fixed number of cell cycles due to telomere shortening. Since the embryonic stem cell can be obtained from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst - (The blob of cells that divide from the zygote), there is no harm to the embryo's development if these cells are taken for research.
Is modifying our cells' telomeres to not become shorter, thus enabling immortality, possible?
Depends on your definition of immortality. By some definitions, Henrietta Lacks is immortal. She was a black woman who’s cells were harvested for research (without her or her families permission, by the way) after her death. She’s alive in a million test tubes right now. Even though she died in 1951 of cervical cancer, her cells live on. They’re quite useful for research on human tissue, as they’re relatively easy to grow. The telomeres of HeLa cells don’t shorten, so they can grow and divide indefinitely. It’s this mutation that made them cancerous. So yeah, human cells can be immortal if their telomeres don’t shorten. We know what the modification is that does this. It’s just not the route to personal immortality, unless you’re willing to die of cancer and unless you’d consider clumps of cells in a test tube to be a person. Given that some people call a fertilized egg a person, I suppose anything’s possible.
Where do stem cells reside in the body?
Every organ contains stem cells. However, for stem cell transplant operation, the stem cells are extracted from the bone marrow. Bone marrow contains lots of stem cells for the purpose of constantly producing blood cells.Stem cells are one of the cells that make up a tissue of an organ. However, stem cells are special because theoretically they don’t age and can divide forever. Difference with most other cells is that regular cells won’t divide forever because of shortened telomere after each division.There are different types of stem cells: specialized stem cells that only produce cells for a single tissue of an organ and unspecialized stem cells that can later specialize into different tissue cells. Unspecialized stem cells can be found in fertilized human eggs and omniotic fluid in pregnant mother. Specialized stem sells can be found in every organ.Cancer cells can theoretically divide forever because they do not have the restriction of telomere as well. However, the difference between the cancerous cells and stem cells are the malfunction of the cell and malfunction of the inhibition switch for the growth. Easily speaking, cancer cells don’t know when to stop dividing and don’t know how to function in an organ, when stem cells know how to function in an organ and know when to stop dividing.
Is there a way to prevent or slow down the deterioration of the ends of DNA strands?
There is. Steam Cell treatment.By injecting stem cells (which are the building blocks of cells) into your bone marrow, these will assist to create new cells with longer DNA strands, allowing a person who received this treatment to look younger, feel strong and more vigorous.However, the downside of this treatment (the main reason why it is not done commercial) is that the treatment is very painful. The stem cells had to inject to directly into your bone marrow and I heard it will hurt like hell.