Hallmarks, Becoming immortal: Hanahan

Professor Douglas Hanahan, discusses that due to the nature of the replication machinery chromosomes get smaller every time they divide, and that we now appreciate that specialized cells in the body have a way to counteract this telomere shorting.

In 2000, Douglas Hanahan (shown below) and Robert Weinberg published a paper in Cell, "The Hallmarks of Cancer," which identified some organizing principles of cancer cell development. ”The nature of the replication machinery is that chromosomes get smaller every time they divide. And we now appreciate that specialized cells in the body have a way to counteract this telomere shorting and that’s using several strategies of which the most prominent is an enzyme known as telomerase that protects the ends of chromosomes from this erosion.”

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  • ID: 946
  • Source: DNALC.IC

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  • ID: 15409
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