Association of telomere instability with senescence of porcine cells

BMC Cell Biology

Research Article

Maja Okuka¹  Na Liu²  Guangzhen Ji²  Kai Liu²  Lin Liu³ 

[1] Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of South Florida College of Medicine, 33612, Tampa, FL, USA;State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology; College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, 300071, Tianjin, China;State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology; College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, 300071, Tianjin, China;Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of South Florida College of Medicine, 33612, Tampa, FL, USA;

关键词: Telomere;    Q-FISH;    qPCR;    Telomere doublets;    Telomere dysfunction;    Senescence;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2121-13-36

 received in 2012-02-21, accepted in 2012-12-10,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundTelomeres are essential for the maintenance of genomic stability, and telomere dysfunction leads to cellular senescence, carcinogenesis, aging, and age-related diseases in humans. Pigs have become increasingly important large animal models for preclinical tests and study of human diseases, and also may provide xeno-transplantation sources. Thus far, Southern blot analysis has been used to estimate average telomere lengths in pigs. Telomere quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization (Q-FISH), however, can reveal status of individual telomeres in fewer cells, in addition to quantifying relative telomere lengths, and has been commonly used for study of telomere function of mouse and human cells. We attempted to investigate telomere characteristics of porcine cells using telomere Q-FISH method.ResultsThe average telomere lengths in porcine cells measured by Q-FISH correlated with those of quantitative real-time PCR method (qPCR) or telomere restriction fragments (TRFs) by Southern blot analysis. Unexpectedly, we found that porcine cells exhibited high incidence of telomere doublets revealed by Q-FISH method, coincided with increased frequency of cellular senescence. Also, telomeres shortened during subculture of various porcine primary cell types. Interestingly, the high frequency of porcine telomere doublets and telomere loss was associated with telomere dysfunction-induced foci (TIFs). The incidence of TIFs, telomere doublets and telomere loss increased with telomere shortening and cellular senescence during subculture.ConclusionQ-FISH method using telomere PNA probe is particularly useful for characterization of porcine telomeres. Porcine cells exhibit high frequency of telomere instability and are susceptible to telomere damage and replicative senescence.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ji et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.