Do telomere regulate in vivo aging?

我们分离了人体组织，如肝脏、胃肠道组织，并用我们先前建立的Southern blotting和端粒-HPA方法检测了端粒长度。我们在静态上没有发现端粒长度与患者年龄之间的显著差异。然而，与老年患者相比，年轻患者端粒较长。我们已经检查了患者的病史等，但我们没有发现患者年龄与衰老表型之间的任何相关性。因此，我们需要一些年轻患者的额外样本来阐明这些问题。为了阐明端粒长度在体内衰老中的作用，我们使用了正常人和Werner综合征等衰老加速患者的原代细胞，并引入了hTERT基因，hTERT是人类端粒酶的催化成分。结果，这些细胞延长了寿命，并像正常细胞一样生长。这些结果表明，端粒延长对细胞寿命有影响。有趣的是，端粒延长后，生长速度和表型与正常年轻细胞相似。这些结果表明，端粒长度是影响衰老的重要因素之一。

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.