Elizabeth Blackburn Quotes

We and other groups are seeing clear statistical links between telomere shortness and risk for a variety of diseases that are becoming very common, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain cancers.

This enzyme, called telomerase, slows the rate at which telomeres degrade, and research indicates that healthy people with longer telomeres have less risk of developing the common illnesses of aging - like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, which are three big killers today.

Long before genetics became a flourishing field, Christians have spoken about sin as an inherited condition.

Medicine has been successful by treating diseases in a very specific way once the damage is done. But telomere length integrates a lot of factors together and gives you an overall picture of risk for what is now emerging as a lot of diseases that tend to occur together, such as diabetes and heart disease.

On the male side of my family, cancer has been very insidious, and so I'm just attempting to live a lifestyle that doesn't follow in their footsteps.

We need 10,000 genomes, not 100, to start to understand the link between genetics, disease and wellness.

First of all, many human diseases are influenced by, if not caused by mutations in genes.

My genetics are good, but they aren't crazy He-Man style.

I don't often meet people who want to suffer cardiovascular disease or whatever, and we get those things as a result of the lifelong accumulation of various types of molecular and cellular damage.

If a test showed you had telomere shortening, it would be a red flag suggesting you should take a look at possible risk factors.

The general rule is that anything that is passed on in reproduction does not undergo senescence.

Many people assume the diseases that kill us are pre-programmed into our genes. High blood pressure by 55, heart attacks at 60, maybe cancer at 70, and so on... But for most of the leading causes of death, our genes usually account for only 10-20 per cent of risk.

Unlike other diseases, the vulnerability to cancer lies in ourselves. We always thought of disease as exogenous, but research into cancer has turned that idea on its head - as long as we live, grow, age, there will be cancer.

A short telomere represents a persistent and non-repairable damage to the cells, which is able to prevent their division or regeneration.

We know that people who are born with shorter telomeres than normal also have a shorter lifespan. We know that shorter telomeres can cause a shorter lifespan.

People's genes can say a great deal about their health. There are genes that reveal an increased likelihood of getting cancer, heart disease or Alzheimer's.

Genetics is about how information is stored and transmitted between generations.

Age is the single largest risk factor for an enormous number of diseases. So if you can essentially postpone aging, then you can have beneficial effects on a whole wide range of disease.

Your age is your No. 1 risk factor for almost every disease, but it's not a disease itself.

In the past, geneticists have looked at so-called disease genes, but a lot of people have changes in their genes and don't get these diseases. There have to be other parts of physiology and genetics that compensate.

There are environmental threats to health; there are internal threats to health - genetic conditions, viral threats, diseases like cancer and Parkinson's. And then there are societal and global ones, like poverty and lack of nutrition. And unknown viral threats - everything from a new kind of influenza to hemorrhagic fever.

The origin of each of us stems from codes of genetic inheritance.

One of the things about genetics that has become clearer as we've done genomes - as we've worked our way through the evolutionary tree, including humans - is that we're probably much more genetic animals than we want to confess we are.

Checking your telomere length is a bit like weighing yourself: you get this single number which depends on a lot of factors. Telomere length gives a sense of your underlying health.

If you want to stay young-looking, pick your parents very carefully.