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Telomerase activation by hTRT in human normal fibroblasts and hepatocellular carcinomas

Nature Genetics volume 18, pages 65–68 (1998)Cite this article

Abstract

Telomerase is a specialized type of reverse transcriptase which catalyzes the synthesis and extension of telomeric DNA (for review, see ref.1). This enzyme is highly active in most cancer cells, but is inactive in most somatic cells2. This striking observation led to the suggestion that telomerase might be important for the continued growth3 or progression4 of cancer cells. However, little is known about the molecular mechanism of telomerase activation in cancer cells. Human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTRT) has recently been identified as a putative human telomerase catalytic subunit5,6. We transfected the gene encoding hTRT into telomerase-negative human normal fibroblast cells and demonstrated that expression of wild-type hTRT induces telomerase activity, whereas hTRT mutants containing mutations in regions conserved among other reverse transcriptases did not. Hepatocellular carcinoma (2O samples) and non-cancerous liver tissues (19 samples) were examined for telomerase activity and expression of hTRT, the human telomerase RNA component (hTR; encoded by TER)7 and the human telomerase-associated protein (HTLP1; encoded by 7EP7)8,9. A significant correlation between hTRT expression and telomerase activity was observed. These results indicate that the hTRT protein is the catalytic subunit of human telomerase, and that it plays a key role in the activation of telomerase in cancer cells.

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Author notes

  1. Jun-ichi Nakayama and Hidetoshi Tahara: J.-iN. & H.T. contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Life Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4259 Nagatsuta, Midori-ku, Yokohama, 226, Japan

    Jun-ichi Nakayama, Motoki Saito, Kaori Ito & Fuyuki Ishikawa

  2. Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology,

    Hidetoshi Tahara, Eiji Tahara & Toshinori Ide

  3. First Department of Internal Medicine,

    Eiichi Nakanishi

  4. First Department of Pathology, Hiroshima University School of Medicine, Kasumi 1-2-3, Hiroshima, 734, Japan

    Hideo Nakamura

  5. Pharmaceutical Laboratory II, Yokohama Research Center, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, 1000, Kamoshida-cho, Aoba-ku, Yokohama, 227, Japan

    Toshio Nakanishi

Authors
  1. Jun-ichi Nakayama
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  2. Hidetoshi Tahara
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  3. Eiji Tahara
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  4. Motoki Saito
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  5. Kaori Ito
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  6. Hideo Nakamura
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  7. Toshio Nakanishi
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  8. Eiichi Nakanishi
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  9. Toshinori Ide
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  10. Fuyuki Ishikawa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fuyuki Ishikawa.

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Nakayama, Ji., Tahara, H., Tahara, E. et al. Telomerase activation by hTRT in human normal fibroblasts and hepatocellular carcinomas . Nat Genet 18, 65–68 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng0198-65

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