Quote from: Yasuda1986 on April 24, 2015, 03:17:37 PM
Telomeres don't actually much to do with the life span of a person. Most people die of old age well before their telomeres become too short to prevent new cell creation.
From my understanding, it's actually directly related, if you look at why Dolly (the cloned sheep) died early, is because the dna came from an adult cell that had had it's telomeres shortened as a result.
From the Dolly wikipedia entry:
"Some in the press speculated that a contributing factor to Dolly's death was that she could have been born with a genetic age of six years, the same age as the sheep from which she was cloned.[16] One basis for this idea was the finding that Dolly's telomeres were short, which is typically a result of the ageing process.[17][18] The Roslin Institute have stated that intensive health screening did not reveal any abnormalities in Dolly that could have come from advanced aging.[16]"