Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Editorial
. 2025 Jun 18:14:e107648.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.107648.

Reading the DNA of telomeres

Shamayita Roy  1 , Claus M Azzalin  1
Affiliations
Editorial

Reading the DNA of telomeres

Shamayita Roy et al. Elife. .

Abstract

Experiments with tools designed to detect DNA damage reveal unique and conserved features of telomeres in cancer cells.

Keywords: END-seq; alternative lengthening of telomeres; cancer; cancer biology; chromosomes; dsDNA; gene expression; human; mouse; ssDNA; telomeres.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

SR No competing interests declared, CA Founder and shareholder of TessellateBIO

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Unique and conserved telomere features in cancer cells that use different telomere maintenance mechanisms.
In cancer cells, the telomeres (red) covering the end of chromosomes (black) are maintained and lengthened by either the ALT pathway (ALT-positive cells; bottom) or the enzyme telomerase (ALT-negative cells; top). ALT-positive cells, ALT-negative cells and non-cancer cells (not shown) share several features: a conserved 5’ terminus ending with the base pair sequence ATC (underlined), and a G-overhang at the 3’ terminus. The telomeres in ALT-positive cells also contain regions of ssDNA that are not found in ALT-negative cells or non-cancer cells. The method employed by Azeroglu et al. did not establish whether the ssDNA within ALT telomeres is C- or G-rich. ALT: alternative lengthening of telomeres; ssDNA: single-stranded DNA; dsDNA: double-stranded DNA.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

  • doi: 10.7554/eLife.106657

References

    1. Arora R, Lee Y, Wischnewski H, Brun CM, Schwarz T, Azzalin CM. RNaseH1 regulates TERRA-telomeric DNA hybrids and telomere maintenance in ALT tumour cells. Nature Communications. 2014;5:5220. doi: 10.1038/ncomms6220. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Azeroglu B, Wu W, Pavani R, Sandhu R, Matsumoto T, Nussenzweig A, Lazzerini Denchi E. Conserved and unique features of terminal telomeric sequences in ALT-positive cancer cells. eLife. 2025;14:RP106657. doi: 10.7554/eLife.106657. - DOI
    1. Dilley RL, Verma P, Cho NW, Winters HD, Wondisford AR, Greenberg RA. Break-induced telomere synthesis underlies alternative telomere maintenance. Nature. 2016;539:54–58. doi: 10.1038/nature20099. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Harley CB, Futcher AB, Greider CW. Telomeres shorten during ageing of human fibroblasts. Nature. 1990;345:458–460. doi: 10.1038/345458a0. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Hockemeyer D, Sfeir AJ, Shay JW, Wright WE, de Lange T. POT1 protects telomeres from a transient DNA damage response and determines how human chromosomes end. The EMBO Journal. 2005;24:2667–2678. doi: 10.1038/sj.emboj.7600733. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources