Quotes from Elizabeth Blackburn

Renewing cells include some types of normal cells that can divide, like immune cells; progenitor cells, which can keep dividing even longer; and those critical cells in our bodies called stem cells, which can divide indefinitely as long as they are healthy.

Senescent cells can leak proinflammatory substances that make you vulnerable to more pain, more chronic illness. Eventually, many senescent cells will undergo a preprogrammed death. The

The real differences between Lisa's and Kara's rates of aging lie in the complex interactions between genes, social relationships and environments, lifestyles, those twists of fate, and especially how one responds to the twists of fate. You're born with a particular set of genes, but the way you live can influence how your genes express themselves. In some cases, lifestyle factors can turn genes on or shut them off.

Why do people age differently? One reason is cellular aging.

Telomeres, which shorten with each cell division, help determine how fast your cells age and when they die, depending on how quickly they wear down.

One study has found that people who tend to focus their minds more on what they are currently doing have longer telomeres than people whose minds tend to wander more.5 Other studies find that taking a class that offers training in mindfulness or meditation is linked to improved telomere maintenance.6

The iPhone mind-wandering study showed that when people are not thinking about what they're doing, they're just not as happy as when they're engaged. As

Nuestros genes son como el hardware de una computadora, no podemos cambiarlos. Los telómeros son parte del epigenoma, y éste es como el software, necesita programación. Nosotros somos los programadores. Hasta cierto punto, controlamos las señales químicas que hacen los cambios. Nuestros telómeros son sensibles, escuchan, nivelan y calibran las circunstancias actuales en el mundo. Juntos podemos mejorar el código de programación.

This enzyme, called telomerase, slows the rate at which telomeres degrade, and research indicates that healthy people with longer telomeres have less risk of developing the common illnesses of aging - like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, which are three big killers today.

In the 1970s, I did a Ph.D. with Fred Sanger in Cambridge who was in the process of inventing ways to map what's inside DNA. He later won the Nobel Prize.

For me, arguably the story of telomeres and telomerase began thousands of years ago, in the cornfields of the Maya highlands of Central America.

If we think of our chromosomes - they carry our genetic material - as being like shoelaces, I work on the plastic tips at the end that protect them.

Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes in cells. Chromosomes carry the genetic information. Telomeres are buffers. They are like the tips of shoelaces. If you lose the tips, the ends start fraying.

In my lab, we're finding that psychological stress actually ages cells, which can be seen when you measure the wearing down of the tips of the chromosomes, those telomeres.

The goal is to learn more about telomere length and other markers of ageing, how best to measure these markers, how they are related to health and lifestyle, and how people respond to learning their own telomere length results.

Tracing the beginnings of the interwoven stories of science can be arbitrary, as beginnings are so often lost in the mists of time.

One characteristic aspect of ageing is the increased susceptibility to disease, particularly age-related diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

I spent my first 4 years living in the tiny town of Snug, by the sea near Hobart. Curious about animals, I would pick up ants in our backyard and jellyfish on the beach.

Researchers have found that the brain definitely sends nerves directly to organs of the immune system and not just to the heart and the lower gut. In that way, too, the brain is influencing the body.

What is it that keeps you so interested in the telomere? It's so intricate and complicated, and you want to know how it works.

I decided I wanted to go to Cambridge, and then I got introduced to Fred Sanger. I was very conscientious, and I asked him when I first got there if I should start reading up on things. But he said, 'No, I think you can just start these experiments,' so I plunged right in.

As maize became important for human food worldwide, modern agricultural research on maize breeding continued the corn breeding begun thousands of years ago in the Central American highlands.

Medicine has been successful by treating diseases in a very specific way once the damage is done. But telomere length integrates a lot of factors together and gives you an overall picture of risk for what is now emerging as a lot of diseases that tend to occur together, such as diabetes and heart disease.

In humans, the thing is that as we mature, our telomeres slowly wear down. So the question has always been: 'Did that matter?' Well, more and more, it seems like it matters.