Culture Club

Telomerase is a protein that's found in all cells, but in normal cells, it's turned off -- it doesn't do anything. In abnormal cells like tumors and germ cells, however, telomerase is quite active: It contains an RNA template capable of producing new telomeres on the ends of chromosomes in aging cells.

Telomerase has the aging research community excited for two reasons. First, since it's naturally active in tumors and can be detected in urine samples, testing for the presence of telomerase can lead to more effective testing of cancer patients. Second, researchers have figured out how to extract telomerase and synthesize it. Potentially, if active telomerase is added to normal adult cells, they'll continue to replicate long beyond their Hayflick limit. In one study that supports this notion, researchers reported that cells to which they'd introduced telomerase had replicated 20 more times than their normal life span would indicate -- and were still dividing [source: Cherfas].

Science has yet to definitively prove that telomerase can produce cellular immortality. There seems to be myriad factors involved in programmed cellular death beyond the destruction of telomeres. As long as humans fear death, though, there will always be research into overcoming these natural obstacles to our immortality, cellular or otherwise.

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