Telomeric RNAs are essential to maintain telomeres

Juan José Montero, Isabel López de Silanes, Osvaldo Graña and Maria A. Blasco ()
Additional contact information
Juan José Montero: Telomeres and Telomerase Group, Molecular Oncology Programme, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO)
Isabel López de Silanes: Telomeres and Telomerase Group, Molecular Oncology Programme, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO)
Osvaldo Graña: Bioinformatics Group, Structural Biology and Biocomputing Programme, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO)
Maria A. Blasco: Telomeres and Telomerase Group, Molecular Oncology Programme, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO)

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Telomeres are transcribed generating long non-coding RNAs known as TERRA. Deciphering the role of TERRA has been one of the unsolved issues of telomere biology in the past decade. This has been, in part, due to lack of knowledge on the TERRA loci, thus preventing functional genetic studies. Here, we describe that long non-coding RNAs with TERRA features are transcribed from the human 20q and Xp subtelomeres. Deletion of the 20q locus by using the CRISPR-Cas9 technology causes a dramatic decrease in TERRA levels, while deletion of the Xp locus does not result in decreased TERRA levels. Strikingly, 20q-TERRA ablation leads to dramatic loss of telomere sequences and the induction of a massive DNA damage response. These findings identify chromosome 20q as a main TERRA locus in human cells and represent the first demonstration in any organism of the essential role of TERRA in the maintenance of telomeres.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12534 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12534

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12534

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().