Beauty Forum Feb23 - Flipbook - Page 25
Protein Activity in T
elomeres
In 2011 a group in Florida working on an
inherited form of ALS reported that the
culprit was an RNA molecule containing a
six-base repeat which by a novel
mechanism could generate a series of toxic
proteins consisting of two amino acids
repeating one after the other. Al-Turki and
Griffith note in their paper a striking
similarity of this RNA to the RNA generated
from human telomeres, and they
hypothesized that the same novel
mechanism might be in play.
They conducted experiments – as described
in the PNAS paper – to show how telomeric
DNA can instruct the cell to produce
signaling proteins they termed VR (valinearginine) and GL (glycine-leucine). Signaling
proteins are essentially chemicals that
trigger a chain reaction of other proteins
inside cells that then lead to a biological
function important for health or disease.
“Discovering that
telomeres encode two
novel signaling proteins
will change our
understanding of
cancer, aging, and how
cells communicate with
other cells.”
Al-Turki and Griffith then chemically
synthesized VR and GL to examine their
properties using powerful electron and
confocal microscopes along with state-ofthe-art biological methods, revealing that
the VR protein is present in elevated
amounts in some human cancer cells, as
well as cells from patients suffering from
diseases resulting from defective telomeres.
“We think it’s possible that as we age, the
amount of VR and GL in our blood will
steadily rise, potentially providing a new
biomarker for biological age as contrasted
to chronological age,” said Al-Turki, a
postdoctoral researcher in the Griffith lab.
“We think inflammation may also trigger the
production of these proteins.”
Griffith noted, “When you go against current
thinking, you are usually wrong because
you are bucking many people who’ve
worked so diligently in their fields. But
occasionally scientists have failed to put
observations from two very distant fields
together and that’s what we did.
Discovering that telomeres encode two
novel signaling proteins will change our
understanding of cancer, aging, and how
cells communicate with other cells.
