An enzyme thought to halt ageing in plants, animals and humans has finally been decoded by scientists after a 20-year plight.
Unravelling the structure of the complex enzyme, called telomerase, could lead to drugs that slow or block the ageing process, along with new treatments for cancer, they reported in the journal Nature.
Elated scientists announced Wednesday the completion of a 20-year quest to map the enzyme thought to forestall ageing by repairing the tips of chromosomes.
‘It has been a long time coming,’ lead investigator Kathleen Collins, a molecular biologist at the University of California in Berkeley, said in a statement.
‘Our findings provide a structural framework for understanding human telomerase disease mutations, and represent an important step towards telomerase-related clinical therapeutics.’
Decoding the architecture of the enzyme, called telomerase, could lead to drugs that slow or block the ageing process, along with new treatments for cancer
Part protein and part RNA (genetic material that relays instructions for building proteins) telomerase acts on microscopic sheaths, known as telomeres, that cover the tips of the chromosomes found inside all cells.
In humans, each cell contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, including one pair of sex chromosomes – the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ – that differ between males and females.
Australian-American biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering telomeres and their protective function in the 1970s, likened them to the tiny plastic caps that keep shoelaces from fraying.
Eventually, however, shoelace tips and telomeres do break down: every time a cell divides the telomeres get worn a little bit more, until the cell stops dividing and dies. This, biologists agree, is probably central to the natural ageing process.
But there is a twist.
In 1985, Blackburn discovered telomerase and its remarkable capacity to extend a cell’s lifespan by essentially rebuilding telomeres with extra bits of DNA, much in the same way that retreading a tyre can make it nearly as good as new.
The enzyme telomerase, in other words, was revealed to be a key agent in longevity.
It can also be linked to disease.
‘Inherited genetic mutations that compromise telomerase function cause disorders,’ said Michael Stone, a professor at the Center for Molecular Biology or RNA at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
A deficiency of the enzyme could accelerate cell death.
At the other extreme, too much telomerase ‘supports unbridled cell growth in most human cancers,’ he wrote in a commentary, also in Nature.
But early efforts to develop drugs that could control the enzyme’s functioning ‘were hampered by an incomplete understanding of the structure and organisation of the telomerase complex,’ Stone added.
Telomerase complex: The enzyme’s protein structure was a tough code to crack, despite telomerase being discovered in 1985
