Forbes July 16, 2024
When it comes to aging, many factors are at play, from lifestyle choices to genetic makeup. One of the key players in this complex process is something you might not have heard much about: telomeres. These tiny structures, found at the ends of our chromosomes, are crucial to our understanding of aging and longevity. But what exactly are telomeres, and why are they so important?
What Are Telomeres?
Imagine your DNA as a set of shoelaces. Telomeres are like the plastic tips at the ends of those shoelaces, preventing them from fraying and unraveling. Structurally, telomeres are repetitive sequences of DNA located at the ends of each chromosome. They don’t carry genetic information like the rest of our DNA but...