Do telomere regulate in vivo aging?

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We have isolated human tissues such as hepatic, gastrointestinal tissues, and examined telomere length by using Southern blotting and telomere-HPA method which we have developed previously. We have could not found significant difference between telomere length and patient age statically. However, young patients had long telomere compared with old patients. We have checked the history of patients such as disease, but we could not found any correlation between patient age and phenotype of aging. So, we need some additional sample from young patients to elucidate these problems. To clarify the function of telomere length in in vivo aging, we used human primarily cells from normal patients and senescent accelerated patients such as Werner syndrome, and introduced hTERT gene which was catalytic component of human telomerase. As the results, these cells extend the life span and growing as normal cells. These results indicated that telomere elongation effect on the life span in cells. Interestingly, after elongation of telomere, growth rate and phenotype are looks like same as normal young cells. These our results indicated that telomere length is one of the important factor for aging.