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Most prokaryotes, relying on circular chromosomes, accordingly do not possess telomeres. [12] A small fraction of bacterial chromosomes (such as those in Streptomyces , Agrobacterium , and Borrelia ), however, are linear and possess telomeres, which are very different from those of the eukaryotic chromosomes in structure and function.
Resolving the question of why cancer cells have short telomeres led to the development of a two-stage model for how cancer cells subvert telomeric regulation of the cell cycle. First, the DNA damage checkpoint must be inactivated to allow cells to continue dividing even when telomeres pass the critical length threshold.
A telomere is a region of repetitive sequences at each end of the chromosomes of most eukaryotes. Telomeres protect the end of the chromosome from DNA damage or from fusion with neighbouring chromosomes.
By contrast, most eukaryotes have linear DNA requiring elaborate mechanisms to maintain the stability of the telomeres and replicate the DNA. However, a circular chromosome has the disadvantage that after replication, the two progeny circular chromosomes can remain interlinked or tangled, and they must be extricated so that each cell inherits ...
Telomere: Used to maintain chromosomal integrity by capping off the ends of the linear chromosomes. This region is a microsatellite , but its function is more specific than a simple tandem repeat. Throughout the eukaryotic kingdom, the overall structure of chromosome ends is conserved and is characterized by the telomeric tract - a series of ...
The thick lines are chromosomes, and the thin blue lines are fibers pulling on the chromosomes and pushing the ends of the cell apart. The cell cycle in eukaryotes: I = Interphase, M = Mitosis, G 0 = Gap 0, G 1 = Gap 1, G 2 = Gap 2, S = Synthesis, G 3 = Gap 3. Cell division is the process by which a parent cell divides into two daughter cells. [1]
The end replication problem is handled in eukaryotic cells by telomere regions and telomerase. Telomeres extend the 3' end of the parental chromosome beyond the 5' end of the daughter strand. This single-stranded DNA structure can act as an origin of replication that recruits telomerase.
Prokaryotic chromosomes have less sequence-based structure than eukaryotes. Bacteria typically have a one-point (the origin of replication) from which replication starts, whereas some archaea contain multiple replication origins. [26] The genes in prokaryotes are often organized in operons and do not usually contain introns, unlike eukaryotes.