On 16 Jan 1995, Michael J Conboy wrote:
> Look in the December twenty-something, 1994 issue of Science
> (telomerase activity and immortal cells) and the October 21 issue (a
> great paper on the cloning of a yeast telomerase component).
>
It is my understanding that telomers need only be maintained, not
increased or regenerated, as part of cell imortalization. In and of
itself, telomerase activity would not be necessary AND sufficient to lead
to immortalization. In any case, I am working with transgenic mice right
now and have entertained the prospect of simply inserting a telomerase
gene construct that expresses at a low, but constituitive rate to see what
happens -- or tie it to an inducible promoter so that I could turn it on
or off with galactose injections or something. Since my lab works in
cancer research, using transgenic mice, perhaps I could talk my PI into
accepting the experiment.
