X-Message-Number: 25386
From: 
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 10:13:34 EST
Subject: Basie, your telomeres are getting shorter

>Bill Walker just show us your graph. Maybe you don't have one.

There are hundreds of papers on Pubmed with telomere length information on 

different animals. Many of them show the length on the actual TRF gels, not just
on graphs. But the graph that you describe would make no sense:

>It would not be difficult to compare the telemeres of a large number of
different animal species (whose ages are known) with their age. One should 
be able to draw a graph that shows this correlation. 

As I explained in my earlier post, rodent and lagomorph telomeres do not 
shorten. Thus there is no correlation with their age, and comparing them with 

non-telomerase-expressing species would yield no information. Other species have
different average telomere lengths, and individual animals have different 
telomere lengths at the beginning of life. There are numerous papers showing 

shortening of average telomere length betweeen young and old animals of the same

species, and large-mammal somatic cells growing in culture show shortening over
time.

Hope this clears things up... if not, you know where Pubmed is.


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