Changes of telomere length cause reciprocal changes in the lifespan of mother cells in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Authors: Austriaco NR Jr; Guarente LP
Year: 1997
Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Abstract: Budding yeast cells divide asymmetrically, giving rise to a mother and its daughter. Mother cells have a limited division potential, called their lifespan, which ends in proliferation-arrest and lysis. In this report we mutate telomerase in Saccharomyces cerevisiae to shorten telomeres and show that, rather than shortening lifespan, this leads to a significant extension in lifespan. This extension requires the product of the SIR3 gene, an essential component of the silencing machinery which binds to telomeres. In contrast, longer telomeres in a genotypically wild-type strain lead to a decrease in lifespan. These findings suggest that the length of telomeres dictates the lifespan by regulating the amount of the silencing machinery available to nontelomeric locations in the yeast genome.
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Created on Nov. 5, 2012, 4:46 p.m.
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Species: Budding yeast

Experiments: 0
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