Human telomerase: biogenesis, trafficking, recruitment, and activation
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, BioFrontiers Institute, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
- Corresponding author: thomas.cech{at}colorado.edu
Abstract
Telomerase is the ribonucleoprotein enzyme that catalyzes the extension of telomeric DNA in eukaryotes. Recent work has begun to reveal key aspects of the assembly of the human telomerase complex, its intracellular trafficking involving Cajal bodies, and its recruitment to telomeres. Once telomerase has been recruited to the telomere, it appears to undergo a separate activation step, which may include an increase in its repeat addition processivity. This review covers human telomerase biogenesis, trafficking, and activation, comparing key aspects with the analogous events in other species.
Keywords
Footnotes
-
Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.263863.115.
This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first six months after the full-issue publication date (see http://genesdev.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After six months, it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
