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Telomere elongation in induced pluripotent stem cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Telomere elongation in induced pluripotent stem cells from dyskeratosis congenita patients

Suneet Agarwal, Yuin-Han Loh, Erin M McLoughlin, Junjiu Huang, In-Hyun Park, Justine D Miller, Hongguang Huo, Maja Okuka, Rosana Maria dos Reis, Sabine Loewer, …
Nature (London), Vol.464(7286), pp.292-296
03/11/2010
DOI: 10.1038/nature08792
PMCID: PMC3058620
PMID: 20164838
url
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/3058620View
Open Access

Abstract

Patients with dyskeratosis congenita (DC), a disorder of telomere maintenance, suffer degeneration of multiple tissues 1 – 3 . Patient-specific induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells 4 represent invaluable in vitro models for human degenerative disorders like DC. A cardinal feature of iPS cells is acquisition of indefinite self-renewal capacity, which is accompanied by induction of telomerase reverse transcriptase ( TERT ) 5 – 7 . We investigated whether defects in telomerase function would limit derivation and maintenance of iPS cells from patients with DC. Here we show that reprogrammed DC cells overcome a critical limitation in telomerase RNA component ( TERC ) levels to restore telomere maintenance and self-renewal. We discovered that TERC upregulation is a feature of the pluripotent state, that multiple telomerase components are targeted by pluripotency-associated transcription factors, and that in autosomal dominant DC, transcriptional silencing accompanies a 3' deletion at the TERC locus. Our results demonstrate that reprogramming restores telomere elongation in DC cells despite genetic lesions affecting telomerase, and suggest that strategies to increase TERC expression may be therapeutically beneficial in DC patients.

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