After 40 years the mysterious function of telomeres was solved

Telomeres (yellow)
 www.michaelwest.org, used with permission

The scientific community knew about telomeres for ~40 years before its role of chromosome protection was determined by Blackburn and Szostak. In the 1930s, both Muller, who gave telomeres their name, and McClintock hypothesized that telomeres protect chromosomes, but without the appropriate molecular techniques the field lost interest. Blackburn, who had found short repeating DNA in telomeres, presented her data at a conference in 1980. Szostak was working with linear DNA or "minichromosomes" in yeast that degraded rapidly, and after hearing Blackburn's research became interested in collaborating. In a simple experiment, they attached Blackburn's telomeric DNA to Szostak's minichromosomes and were excited when they noticed the minichromosomes were protected from degradation. Blackburn and her graduate student Greider went on to discover telomerase and ultimately earned all three the Nobel Prize in 2009. Learning the function of telomeres and how they are synthesized has opened the doors to aging and cancer research.

• The paper: Cell 1982

An optional article about Blackburn: Natural History Blackburn article