Quotes from Elizabeth Blackburn

Being senior enough in the field, having enough solidity, I don't feel afraid of being marginalized.

I was born in the small city of Hobart in Tasmania, Australia, in 1948. My parents were family physicians. My grandfather and great grandfather on my mother's side were geologists.

At Cambridge, there was a completely unintimidating culture, and there were no class divisions among the students.

We're involved in a very large study that's federally funded and being done with Kaiser Permanente, and saliva is a very non-invasive way to get cells from the body.

Observational studies show that exercise, nutritional supplements and reducing psychological stress can help. Chronic high stress and smoking can lead to accelerated telomere shortening.

Challenges in medicine are moving from 'Treat the symptoms after the house is on fire' to 'Can we preserve the house intact?'

Checking your telomere length is a bit like weighing yourself: you get this single number which depends on a lot of factors. Telomere length gives a sense of your underlying health.

I'm pretty good about getting some exercise every day - well, most days. The secret for me was to put the elliptical in front of the TV.

When you bring telomerase RNA levels down by using a mechanism that targets the RNA for destruction, the cells which were running on very high telomerase levels are now running on a lean diet of telomerase.

I chose biochemistry as my major and graduated after 4 years with an Honours degree in Biochemistry. During that time, I had come to love biochemistry research, although I was just getting my feet wet in laboratory research.

Biology sometimes reveals its fundamental principles through what may seem at first to be arcane and bizarre.

Ageing is so many different things, and cells being able to self-renew is part of the picture but not all of it.

When scientists get old, they get interested in the brain, and I'm a little bit afraid I'm falling into that.

Exercise mitigates the effects of stress - and stress, we know, shortens telomeres. In fact, early studies indicate that stress reduction techniques like meditation help people maintain the length of their telomeres.

I've only actively promoted what we always hope is good science.

Perhaps arising from a fascination with animals, biology seemed the most interesting of sciences to me as a child.

If a test showed you had telomere shortening, it would be a red flag suggesting you should take a look at possible risk factors.

Genes load the gun, and environment pulls the trigger.

Remember, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Don't be too timid or squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Fyodor Dostoevsky: "Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.

To an extent that has surprised us and the rest of the scientific community, telomeres do not simply carry out the commands issued by your genetic code. Your telomeres, it turns out, are listening to you. They absorb the instructions you give them. The way you live can, in effect, tell your telomeres to speed up the process of cellular aging. But it can also do the opposite.

No seas muy tímido ni quisquilloso sobre tus acciones. Toda la vida es un experimento. Mientras más experimentos hagas, mejor".

The worst stressors—exposure to violence, trauma, abuse, and mental illness—are shaped by a surprising factor: the level of income inequality in a region. For example, countries with the biggest gap between their richest citizens and their poorest have the worst health and the most violence.

Hayflick limit, the natural limit that human cells have for dividing, and the stop switch happens to be telomeres that have become critically short. Are