WILT, ALT, and Zscan4

From the : “To develop an unbreachable defense against cancer, SENS Foundation is pursuing the of systematically deleting genes essential to the cellular -maintenance mechanisms (TMM) from all , while ensuring ongoing tissue repair and maintenance with TMM-deficient cells whose telomeres have been lengthened . In addition to the deletion of one or more genes coding for essential element(s) of the telomerase , success will also require the deletion of some essential element of the machinery for the , observed in a minority of cancer cells. Heretofore, the identity of that machinery has been elusive. Yeast cells have the ability to lengthen telomeres through a telomerase-independent mechanism involving telomere recombination, and there has been evidence for some time suggesting that ALT cancers lengthen telomeres through a similar process.” The article goes on to look in detail at one plausible candidate mechanism for ALT, and how this new knowledge might be incorporated into WILT.

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Read More Longevity Meme Commentary:

(1) SENS Foundation
URL: http://www.sens.org/node/739
(2) WILT (Wholebody Interdiction of Lengthening of Telomeres) strategy (OncoSENS)
URL: http://www.sens.org/sens-research/research-themes/oncosens
(3) telomere
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere
(4) somatic cells
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_cell
(5) through periodic re-seeding of somatic stem-cell pools
URL: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/06/complicating-wilt.php
(6) autologous
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autologous
(7) ex vivo
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_vivo
(8) holoenzyme
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holoenzyme
(9) Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres (ALT) phenomenon
URL: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/01/alternative-lengthening-of-telomeres-alt-101.php
(10) http://www.sens.org/node/739
URL: http://www.sens.org/node/739
(11)
URL: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news

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