High-throughput telomere length quantification by FISH and its application to human population studies
- Telomeres and Telomerase Group, Molecular Oncology Program, Spanish National Cancer Centre, 3 Melchor Fernández Almagro, Madrid E-28029, Spain
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Edited by Eric Gilson, École Normale Supérieure Lyon, Lyon, France, and accepted by the Editorial Board January 26, 2007 (received for review October 23, 2006)
Abstract
A major limitation of studies of the relevance of telomere length to cancer and age-related diseases in human populations and to the development of telomere-based therapies has been the lack of suitable high-throughput (HT) assays to measure telomere length. We have developed an automated HT quantitative telomere FISH platform, HT quantitative FISH (Q-FISH), which allows the quantification of telomere length as well as percentage of short telomeres in large human sample sets. We show here that this technique provides the accuracy and sensitivity to uncover associations between telomere length and human disease.
Footnotes
- *To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mblasco{at}cnio.es
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Author contributions: A.C. and E.V. contributed equally to this work; M.A.B. designed research; A.C. and E.V. performed research; P.K. and M.A.B. analyzed data; and M.A.B. and P.K. wrote the paper.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. E.G. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial Board.
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This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0609367104/DC1.
- Abbreviations:
- GDS,
- geriatric depression scale;
- HT,
- high-throughput;
- MEF,
- mouse embryonic fibroblasts;
- MMSE,
- mini mental state examination;
- Q-FISH,
- quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization;
- PNA,
- peptide nucleic acid;
- PSS,
- perceived stress scale;
- ROI,
- region of interest.
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Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
- © 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
