Elizabeth Blackburn, “Telomeres and Telomerase”, NOBEL PRIZE LECTURE, 7 December 2009.

Barbara McClintock (1902-1992), “Significance of Responses of the Genome to Challenge” NOBEL PRIZE LECTURE, 8 December 1983 was the topic of an earlier blog post.

Here I present: Elizabeth Blackburn, “Telomeres and Telomerase: The Means to the End”, NOBEL PRIZE LECTURE, 7 December 2009.

COMMENTS

What is Elizabeth Blackburn famous for? The answer is telomeres the “secret of immortality”.   The enzyme telomerase adds telomere-repeats (TTAGGG)n at the ends of the chromosomes, so that cells don’t die. However, there must be a balance in doing so.  Most cancer cells are basically immortal because telomerase is always active.