Department of Animal Science, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, United States.
Exp Gerontol. 2010 Sep;45(9):647-54. doi: 10.1016/j.exger.2010.04.002. Epub 2010 Apr 29.
Division-dependent telomere shortening correlating with age triggers senescence on a cellular level and telomere dysfunction can facilitate oncogenesis. Therefore, the study of telomere biology is critical to the understanding of aging and cancer. The domestic chicken, a classic model for the study of developmental biology, possesses a telomere genome with highly conserved aspects and distinctive features which make it uniquely suited for the study of telomere maintenance mechanisms, their function and dysfunction. The purpose of this review is to highlight the chicken as a model for aging research, specifically as a model for telomere and telomerase research, and to increase its utility as such by describing developments in the study of chicken telomeres and telomerase in the context of related research in human and mouse.
端粒缩短与年龄相关，会在细胞水平引发衰老，而端粒功能障碍则会促进肿瘤发生。因此，研究端粒生物学对于理解衰老和癌症至关重要。家鸡是发育生物学研究的经典模型，其端粒基因组具有高度保守的方面和独特的特征，使其非常适合研究端粒维持机制、它们的功能和功能障碍。本文的目的是强调鸡作为衰老研究的模型，特别是作为端粒和端粒酶研究的模型，并通过描述在人类和小鼠相关研究背景下鸡端粒和端粒酶研究的进展，增加其作为此类模型的实用性。
