Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded to Discovery of Telomere and Telomerase

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak are credited with discovering how telomeres work and the function of telomerase. “As cells divide, chromosomes need to be replicated perfectly. Work by the researchers determined that telomeres protect DNA from degradation in the process, and that telomerase maintains the telomeres,” as reported by CNN.

Carol Greider was a student of Blackburn, and Szostak collaborated with the Blackburn group 20 years ago and has since left that field. Still remember going to Blackburn’s seminar as part of the molecular biology seminar series at USC in the early 90’s, and reading Szostak’s papers on aptamer selection while designing RNA aptamer selection schemes (SELEX) to find substrates of pre-mRNA splicing factors.


Product related note: Human telomerase gene TERT is provided on lentiviral vectors to increase efficiency of generating iPS cells.