Our lab is interested in telomere function, the regulation of telomere length and the biochemistry of telomerase.
Telomeres are essential for both chromosome stability and for length maintenance.
Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein reverse transcriptase that synthesizes telomere repeats onto chromosome ends. To understand the telomerase, we initially focused on the well characterized Tetrahymena enzyme. Using a reconstitution system, we mapped the essential RNA functional region. To extend this analysis to mammalian telomerase we first needed to determine the secondary structure of the RNA, We cloned and sequences telomerase RNA genes from 35 distantly related vertebrate species. We then developed a secondary structure using phylogenetic comparative analysis.