Telomerase: an enzyme that holds potential to change ageing

By Sunil Saxena

Imagine if we had a key to keep our cells young and healthy forever. Well, scientists believe they may have found that key— and it’s called telomerase.

Telomerase is an amazing enzyme that plays a big role in the ageing process, though it also has a flip side. Scientists associate it with diseases like cancer.

One of the key tasks of telomerase is to maintain the length of our telomeres, which are special DNA sequences located at the ends of our chromosomes. You can think of telomeres as the plastic tips at the end of your shoelaces. Without them, the laces, or in this case, our DNA, would fray and get damaged.

These telomeres unfortunately get a little shorter every time a cell replicates. You can say they are like a candle burning down.  When they get too short, the DNA lets off an alarm. It signals our cells to either stop dividing or die. Scientists say this is one of the key reasons of human ageing.

But here’s where telomerase steps in. It binds itself to the telomere, adds more DNA, and extends it, giving our cells a bit more time before they die. Scientists call this process reverse transcriptase. In this process, RNA builds DNA. Normally, it is the other way around — that is DNA builds RNA.

This is not all. After telomerase does its job, another enzyme called DNA polymerase steps in and copies the DNA strand that telomerase just extended.  This is nature’s way of saving our cells.

But here’s the catch: in most of our body cells, telomerase is present in very low amounts— not enough to completely stop the shortening, but enough to slow it down.

This natural limitation on cell division might actually be a built-in defence against diseases such as cancer. When telomeres get too short, they prevent cells from dividing uncontrollably, which is one way of preventing cancer.

But this protection isn’t foolproof. Some cells manage to bypass this limit and start producing too much telomerase. In fact, most human cancers show abnormally high levels of this enzyme.

Researchers are still trying to fully understand the connections between telomerase, ageing, and diseases. What we do know is that too little telomerase can be just as problematic. If our bodies don’t have enough of this enzyme, or if it’s not working properly, it can lead to serious health issues, like bone marrow failure, where our body can’t make enough blood.

Scientists are still piecing together how telomerase influences our health. But with every new study, we get closer to understanding how this enzyme could be the key to a longer, healthier life.

If they succeed, we might stay youthful forever!

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