Ageing is so many different things, and cells being able to self-renew is part of the picture but not all of it.
From Elizabeth Blackburn
I was born in the small city of Hobart in Tasmania, Australia, in 1948. My parents were family physicians. My grandfather and great grandfather on my mother's side were geologists.
Tracing the beginnings of the interwoven stories of science can be arbitrary, as beginnings are so often lost in the mists of time.
As maize became important for human food worldwide, modern agricultural research on maize breeding continued the corn breeding begun thousands of years ago in the Central American highlands.
In my early work, our molecular views of telomeres were first focused on the DNA.
I was using very unconventional methods to sequence the telemetric DNA, originally.
What is it that keeps you so interested in the telomere? It's so intricate and complicated, and you want to know how it works.
Generally, we try to have a situation where the person is healthy, so you're not confounded by disease. So, that means that healthy individuals are donating their blood samples for the studies.
I've only actively promoted what we always hope is good science.
Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes in cells. Chromosomes carry the genetic information. Telomeres are buffers. They are like the tips of shoelaces. If you lose the tips, the ends start fraying.
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