Telomeres and Cancer

In course

Description

This lecture covers the role of telomeres in cancer biology, focusing on telomerase, telomere replication problems, and the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway. It discusses historical perspectives, telomere function, end replication problems, telomerase structure, and the telomerase reaction cycle. The lecture also explores telomeric DNA structures, telomerase recruitment to telomeres, and the implications of telomere shortening in tumorigenesis. Additionally, it delves into the ALT pathway, TERRA long noncoding RNA, and the functions of TERRA in telomere maintenance and cancer. The lecture concludes with insights into the immortalization and transformation of human cells through telomerase reactivation.

Instructors (2)

Official source

https://mediaspace.epfl.ch/media/0_gu9do3sq

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Related lectures (4)

Related concepts (76)

Telomere

A telomere (ˈtɛləmɪər,_ˈtiːlə-; ) is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences associated with specialized proteins at the ends of linear chromosomes. Telomeres are a widespread genetic feature most commonly found in eukaryotes. In most, if not all species possessing them, they protect the terminal regions of chromosomal DNA from progressive degradation and ensure the integrity of linear chromosomes by preventing DNA repair systems from mistaking the very ends of the DNA strand for a double-strand break.

Telomerase

Telomerase, also called terminal transferase, is a ribonucleoprotein that adds a species-dependent telomere repeat sequence to the 3' end of telomeres. A telomere is a region of repetitive sequences at each end of the chromosomes of most eukaryotes. Telomeres protect the end of the chromosome from DNA damage or from fusion with neighbouring chromosomes. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster lacks telomerase, but instead uses retrotransposons to maintain telomeres. Telomerase is a reverse transcriptase enzyme that carries its own RNA molecule (e.

DNA replication

In molecular biology, DNA replication is the biological process of producing two identical replicas of DNA from one original DNA molecule. DNA replication occurs in all living organisms acting as the most essential part of biological inheritance. This is essential for cell division during growth and repair of damaged tissues, while it also ensures that each of the new cells receives its own copy of the DNA. The cell possesses the distinctive property of division, which makes replication of DNA essential.

Transformation matrix

In linear algebra, linear transformations can be represented by matrices. If is a linear transformation mapping to and is a column vector with entries, then for some matrix , called the transformation matrix of . Note that has rows and columns, whereas the transformation is from to . There are alternative expressions of transformation matrices involving row vectors that are preferred by some authors. Matrices allow arbitrary linear transformations to be displayed in a consistent format, suitable for computation.

Geometric transformation

In mathematics, a geometric transformation is any bijection of a set to itself (or to another such set) with some salient geometrical underpinning. More specifically, it is a function whose domain and range are sets of points — most often both or both — such that the function is bijective so that its inverse exists. The study of geometry may be approached by the study of these transformations. Geometric transformations can be classified by the dimension of their operand sets (thus distinguishing between, say, planar transformations and spatial transformations).