Lecture

Telomeres and Cancer

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In course

BIO-471: Cancer biology I

The course covers in detail molecular mechanisms of cancer development with emphasis on cell cycle control, genome stability, oncogenes, tumor suppressor genes, signaling pathways involved in cancer, genomic cancer analysis and rational cancer therapies. ...

Description

This lecture covers the role of telomeres in cancer biology, focusing on telomerase, telomere replication problems, and the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway. It discusses the historical perspective, telomere function, end replication problems, telomerase reaction cycle, telomeric DNA, and the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of telomeres protection. The lecture also explores the end replication problem solutions, telomere maintenance mechanisms, and the impact of telomeres on cellular senescence and tumorigenesis.

Instructors (3)

Viesturs Simanis

Viesturs Simanis was awarded a degree in Biochemistry from Imperial College London. He carried out his doctoral studies with David Lane at Imperial College, London University, and postdoctoral studies with Paul Nurse (London and Oxford). He has been a group leader at ISREC since 1988. In 2006 he was appointed Associate Professor at the EPFL School of Life Sciences

Elisa Oricchio

Expertise Cancer geneticsMouse modelsTherapyStem cellsLymphoma Teaching & PhD PhD Students Vamsi Krishna Polavarapu, Asli Ece Kasapoglu, Konstantina Georgakopoulou, Eleni Balli Past EPFL PhD Students Maria Christine Donaldson, Elena Battistello, Daniel Pereira Duarte, Frédérica Schyrr, Ruxandra-Andreea Lambuta, Aaron Simone Petruzzella, Jixing Zhong, Justine Epiney Courses Cancer biology I BIO-471 The course covers in detail molecular mechanisms of cancer development with emphasis on cell

Joachim Lingner

PhD at the Biocenter, University of Basel 1989-1992 (Supervisor: Walter Keller). Postdoc at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Colorado at Boulder 1993-1997 (Supervisor: Thomas Cech). Junior group leader at ISREC 1997-2001. Senior group leader at ISREC since 2002. Associate Professor at EPFL 2005-2008. Full Professor at EPFL since 2009. Honors: START-fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation in 1997; Friedrich Miescher Prize from the Swiss Society of Biochemistry in 2002; EMBO member in 2005; ERC advanced investigator grant in 2008.

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Telomere

A telomere (ˈtɛləmɪər,_ˈtiːlə-; ) is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences associated with specialized proteins at the ends of linear chromosomes. Telomeres are a widespread genetic feature most commonly found in eukaryotes. In most, if not all species possessing them, they protect the terminal regions of chromosomal DNA from progressive degradation and ensure the integrity of linear chromosomes by preventing DNA repair systems from mistaking the very ends of the DNA strand for a double-strand break.

Telomerase

Telomerase, also called terminal transferase, is a ribonucleoprotein that adds a species-dependent telomere repeat sequence to the 3' end of telomeres. A telomere is a region of repetitive sequences at each end of the chromosomes of most eukaryotes. Telomeres protect the end of the chromosome from DNA damage or from fusion with neighbouring chromosomes. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster lacks telomerase, but instead uses retrotransposons to maintain telomeres. Telomerase is a reverse transcriptase enzyme that carries its own RNA molecule (e.

Chromosome 2

Chromosome 2 is one of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes in humans. People normally have two copies of this chromosome. Chromosome 2 is the second-largest human chromosome, spanning more than 242 million base pairs and representing almost eight percent of the total DNA in human cells. Chromosome 2 contains the HOXD homeobox gene cluster. Humans have only twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, while all other extant members of Hominidae have twenty-four pairs. It is believed that Neanderthals and Denisovans had twenty-three pairs.

DNA replication

In molecular biology, DNA replication is the biological process of producing two identical replicas of DNA from one original DNA molecule. DNA replication occurs in all living organisms acting as the most essential part of biological inheritance. This is essential for cell division during growth and repair of damaged tissues, while it also ensures that each of the new cells receives its own copy of the DNA. The cell possesses the distinctive property of division, which makes replication of DNA essential.

Y chromosome

The Y chromosome is one of two sex chromosomes in therian mammals and other organisms. The other sex chromosome is the X chromosome. Y is normally the sex-determining chromosome in many species, since it is the presence or absence of Y that determines the male or female sex of offspring produced in sexual reproduction. In mammals, the Y chromosome contains the gene SRY, which triggers male development. The DNA in the human Y chromosome is composed of about 62 million base pairs, making it similar in size to chromosome 19.

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