The science of cells that never get old | Elizabeth Blackburn | eJOY English
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Where does the end begin?
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Well, for me, it all began with this little fellow.
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This adorable organism --
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well, I think it's adorable --
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is called Tetrahymena and it's a single-celled creature.
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It's also been known as pond scum.
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So that's right, my career started with pond scum.
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Now, it was no surprise I became a scientist.
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Growing up far away from here,
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as a little girl I was deadly curious
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about everything alive.
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I used to pick up lethally poisonous stinging jellyfish and sing to them.
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And so starting my career,
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I was deadly curious about fundamental mysteries
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of the most basic building blocks of life,
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and I was fortunate to live in a society where that curiosity was valued.
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Now, for me, this little pond scum critter Tetrahymena
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was a great way to study the fundamental mystery
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I was most curious about:
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those bundles of DNA in our cells called chromosomes.
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And it was because I was curious about the very ends of chromosomes,
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known as telomeres.
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Now, when I started my quest,
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all we knew was that they helped protect the ends of chromosomes.
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It was important when cells divide.
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It was really important,
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but I wanted to find out what telomeres consisted of,
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and for that, I needed a lot of them.
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And it so happens that cute little Tetrahymena
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has a lot of short linear chromosomes,
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around 20,000,
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so lots of telomeres.
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And I discovered that telomeres consisted of special segments
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of noncoding DNA right at the very ends of chromosomes.
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But here's a problem.
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Now, we all start life as a single cell.
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It multiples to two. Two becomes four. Four becomes eight,
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and on and on to form the 200 million billion cells
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that make up our adult body.
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And some of those cells have to divide thousands of times.
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In fact, even as I stand here before you,
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all throughout my body, cells are furiously replenishing
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to, well, keep me standing here before you.
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So every time a cell divides, all of its DNA has to be copied,
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all of the coding DNA inside of those chromosomes,
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because that carries the vital operating instructions
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that keep our cells in good working order,
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so my heart cells can keep a steady beat,
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which I assure you they're not doing right now,
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and my immune cells
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can fight off bacteria and viruses,
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and our brain cells can save the memory of our first kiss
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and keep on learning throughout life.
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But there is a glitch in the way DNA is copied.
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It is just one of those facts of life.
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Every time the cell divides and the DNA is copied,
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some of that DNA from the ends gets worn down and shortened,
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some of that telomere DNA.
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And think about it
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like the protective caps at the ends of your shoelace.
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And those keep the shoelace, or the chromosome, from fraying,
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and when that tip gets too short, it falls off,
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and that worn down telomere sends a signal to the cells.
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"The DNA is no longer being protected."
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It sends a signal. Time to die.
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So, end of story.
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Well, sorry, not so fast.
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It can't be the end of the story,
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because life hasn't died off the face of the earth.
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So I was curious:
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if such wear and tear is inevitable,
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how on earth does Mother Nature make sure
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we can keep our chromosomes intact?
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Now, remember that little pond scum critter Tetrahymena?
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The craziest thing was, Tetrahymena cells never got old and died.
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Their telomeres weren't shortening as time marched on.
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Sometimes they even got longer.
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Something else was at work,
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and believe me, that something was not in any textbook.
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So working in my lab with my extraordinary student Carol Greider --
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and Carol and I shared the Nobel Prize for this work --
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we began running experiments
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and we discovered cells do have something else.
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It was a previously undreamed-of enzyme
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that could replenish, make longer, telomeres,
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and we named it telomerase.
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And when we removed our pond scum's telomerase,
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their telomeres ran down and they died.
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So it was thanks to their plentiful telomerase
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that our pond scum critters never got old.
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OK, now, that's an incredibly hopeful message
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for us humans to be receiving from pond scum,
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because it turns out
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that as we humans age, our telomeres do shorten,
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and remarkably, that shortening is aging us.
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Generally speaking, the longer your telomeres,
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the better off you are.
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It's the overshortening of telomeres
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that leads us to feel and see signs of aging.
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My skin cells start to die
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and I start to see fine lines, wrinkles.
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Hair pigment cells die.
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You start to see gray.
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Immune system cells die.
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You increase your risks of getting sick.
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In fact, the cumulative research from the last 20 years
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has made clear that telomere attrition
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is contributing to our risks of getting cardiovascular diseases,
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Alzheimer's, some cancers and diabetes,
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the very conditions many of us die of.
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And so we have to think about this.
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What is going on?
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This attrition,
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we look and we feel older, yeah.
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Our telomeres are losing the war of attrition faster.
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And those of us who feel youthful longer,
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it turns out our telomeres are staying longer
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for longer periods of time,
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extending our feelings of youthfulness
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and reducing the risks of all we most dread
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as the birthdays go by.
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OK,
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seems like a no-brainer.
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Now, if my telomeres are connected
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to how quickly I'm going to feel and get old,
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if my telomeres can be renewed by my telomerase,
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then all I have to do to reverse the signs and symptoms of aging
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is figure out where to buy that Costco-sized bottle
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of grade A organic fair trade telomerase, right?
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Great! Problem solved.
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(Applause)
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Not so fast, I'm sorry.
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Alas, that's not the case.
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OK. And why?
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It's because human genetics has taught us
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that when it comes to our telomerase,
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we humans live on a knife edge.
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OK, simply put,
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yes, nudging up telomerase does decrease the risks of some diseases,
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but it also increases the risks of certain and rather nasty cancers.
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So even if you could buy that Costco-sized bottle of telomerase,
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and there are many websites marketing such dubious products,
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the problem is you could nudge up your risks of cancers.
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And we don't want that.
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Now, don't worry,
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and because, while I think it's kind of funny that right now,
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you know, many of us may be thinking, "Well, I'd rather be like pond scum," ...
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(Laughter)
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there is something for us humans
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in the story of telomeres and their maintenance.
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But I want to get one thing clear.
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It isn't about enormously extending human lifespan
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or immortality.
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It's about health span.
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Now, health span is the number of years of your life
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when you're free of disease, you're healthy, you're productive,
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you're zestfully enjoying life.
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Disease span, the opposite of health span,
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is the time of your life spent feeling old and sick and dying.
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So the real question becomes,
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OK, if I can't guzzle telomerase,
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do I have control over my telomeres' length
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and hence my well-being, my health,
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without those downsides of cancer risks?
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OK?
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So, it's the year 2000.
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Now, I've been minutely scrutinizing little teeny tiny telomeres
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very happily for many years,
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when into my lab walks a psychologist named Elissa Epel.
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Now, Elissa's expertise is in the effects of severe, chronic psychological stress
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on our mind's and our body's health.
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And there she was standing in my lab,
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which ironically overlooked the entrance to a mortuary, and --
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(Laughter)
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And she had a life-and-death question for me.
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"What happens to telomeres in people who are chronically stressed?"
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she asked me.
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You see, she'd been studying caregivers,
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and specifically mothers of children with a chronic condition,
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be it gut disorder, be it autism, you name it --
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a group obviously under enormous and prolonged psychological stress.
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I have to say, her question
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changed me profoundly.
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See, all this time I had been thinking of telomeres
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as those miniscule molecular structures that they are,
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and the genes that control telomeres.
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And when Elissa asked me about studying caregivers,
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I suddenly saw telomeres in a whole new light.
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I saw beyond the genes and the chromosomes
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into the lives of the real people we were studying.
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And I'm a mom myself,
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and at that moment,
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I was struck by the image of these women
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dealing with a child with a condition
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very difficult to deal with, often without help.
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And such women, simply,
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often look worn down.
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So was it possible their telomeres were worn down as well?
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So our collective curiosity went into overdrive.
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Elissa selected for our first study a group of such caregiving mothers,
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and we wanted to ask: What's the length of their telomeres
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compared with the number of years that they have been caregiving
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for their child with a chronic condition?
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So four years go by
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and the day comes when all the results are in,
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and Elissa looked down at our first scatterplot
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and literally gasped,
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because there was a pattern to the data,
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and it was the exact gradient that we most feared might exist.
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It was right there on the page.
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The longer, the more years that is,
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the mother had been in this caregiving situation,
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no matter her age,
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the shorter were her telomeres.
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And the more she perceived
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her situation as being more stressful,
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the lower was her telomerase and the shorter were her telomeres.
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So we had discovered something unheard of:
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the more chronic stress you are under, the shorter your telomeres,
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meaning the more likely you were to fall victim to an early disease span
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and perhaps untimely death.
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Our findings meant that people's life events
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and the way we respond to these events
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can change how you maintain your telomeres.
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So telomere length wasn't just a matter of age counted in years.
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Elissa's question to me,
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back when she first came to my lab, indeed had been a life-and-death question.
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Now, luckily, hidden in that data there was hope.
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We noticed that some mothers,
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despite having been carefully caring for their children for many years,
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had been able to maintain their telomeres.
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So studying these women closely revealed that they were resilient to stress.
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Somehow they were able to experience their circumstances
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not as a threat day in and day out
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but as a challenge,
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and this has led to a very important insight for all of us:
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we have control over the way we age
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all the way down into our cells.
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OK, now our initial curiosity became infectious.
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Thousands of scientists from different fields
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added their expertise to telomere research,
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and the findings have poured in.
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It's up to over 10,000 scientific papers and counting.
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So several studies rapidly confirmed our initial finding
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that yes, chronic stress is bad for telomeres.
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And now many are revealing
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that we have more control over this particular aging process
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than any of us could ever have imagined.
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A few examples:
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a study from the University of California, Los Angeles
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of people who are caring for a relative with dementia, long-term,
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and looked at their caregiver's telomere maintenance capacity
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and found that it was improved
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by them practicing a form of meditation
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for as little as 12 minutes a day for two months.
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Attitude matters.
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If you're habitually a negative thinker,
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you typically see a stressful situation with a threat stress response,
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meaning if your boss wants to see you,
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you automatically think, "I'm about to be fired,"
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and your blood vessels constrict,
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and your level of the stress hormone cortisol creeps up,
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and then it stays up,
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and over time, that persistently high level of the cortisol
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actually damps down your telomerase.
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Not good for your telomeres.
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On the other hand,
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if you typically see something stressful as a challenge to be tackled,
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then blood flows to your heart and to your brain,
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and you experience a brief but energizing spike of cortisol.
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And thanks to that habitual "bring it on" attitude,
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your telomeres do just fine.
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So ...
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What is all of this telling us?
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Your telomeres do just fine.
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You really do have power to change what is happening
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to your own telomeres.
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But our curiosity just got more and more intense,
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because we started to wonder,
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what about factors outside our own skin?
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Could they impact our telomere maintenance as well?
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You know, we humans are intensely social beings.
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Was it even possible that our telomeres were social as well?
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And the results have been startling.
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As early as childhood,
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emotional neglect, exposure to violence,
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bullying and racism
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all impact your telomeres, and the effects are long-term.
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Can you imagine the impact on children
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of living years in a war zone?
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People who can't trust their neighbors
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and who don't feel safe in their neighborhoods
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consistently have shorter telomeres.
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So your home address matters for telomeres as well.
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On the flip side,
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tight-knit communities, being in a marriage long-term,
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and lifelong friendships, even,
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all improve telomere maintenance.
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So what is all this telling us?
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It's telling us that I have the power to impact my own telomeres,
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and I also have the power to impact yours.
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Telomere science has told us just how interconnected we all are.
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But I'm still curious.
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I do wonder
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what legacy all of us
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will leave for the next generation?
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Will we invest
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in the next young woman or man
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peering through a microscope at the next little critter,
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the next bit of pond scum,
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curious about a question we don't even know today is a question?
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It could be a great question that could impact all the world.
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And maybe, maybe you're curious about you.
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Now that you know how to protect your telomeres,
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are you curious what are you going to do
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with all those decades of brimming good health?
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And now that you know you could impact the telomeres of others,
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are you curious
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how will you make a difference?
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And now that you know the power of curiosity to change the world,
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how will you make sure that the world invests in curiosity
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for the sake of the generations that will come after us?
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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The science of cells that never get old | Elizabeth Blackburn

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What makes our bodies age ... our skin wrinkle, our hair turn white, our immune systems weaken? Biologist Elizabeth Blackburn shares a Nobel Prize for her work finding out the answer.
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