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View Full Version : Discovery Of Mechanism Explains How Cancer Enzyme Winds Up On Ends Of Chromosomes


gdpawel
07-13-2008, 10:14 AM
Human cancer cells divide and conquer. Unless physicians can control that division with surgery, chemotherapy or radiation, the wildly dividing cells will eventually destroy a person's life. Researchers have known for some time that an enzyme called telomerase is crucial to cancer's progress.

Now, for the first time, researchers at the University of Georgia's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences have shown a mechanism that explains how two essential components of human telomerase - normally active only in early prenatal development but turned back on during cancer growth - are "recruited" from distinct sites in the cell to the telomere, an area at the end of a chromosome that normally protects it from destruction.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/114699.php

http://www.hhmi.org/news/cech20060205.html

When they say "structure" they mean the actual three dimension structure of the protein.

http://www.nmr.utmb.edu/images/s100p_large.jpg

Protein: any of a very large group of complex organic compounds occurring in all loving matter, composed of amino acids, essential for tissue growth and repair.

Enzyme: any of numerous proteins produced by living organisms and functioning as biochemical catalysts in animals and plants.<!-- / message --><!-- edit note -->