Elizabeth Blackburn

“Exercise mitigates the effects of stress - and stress, we know, shortens telomeres. In fact, early studies indicate that stress reduction techniques like meditation help people maintain the length of their telomeres.”

“Ageing is so many different things, and cells being able to self-renew is part of the picture but not all of it.”

“In my early work, our molecular views of telomeres were first focused on the DNA.”

“When you bring telomerase RNA levels down by using a mechanism that targets the RNA for destruction, the cells which were running on very high telomerase levels are now running on a lean diet of telomerase.”

“In my lab, we're finding that psychological stress actually ages cells, which can be seen when you measure the wearing down of the tips of the chromosomes, those telomeres.”

“Cancer cells have a lot of other things that are really wrong with them, and we should never forget that these are cells that have become deaf to all the signals that the body sends out, such as you can multiply a certain amount, you can be in a certain place in the body, where to stay, where to move, and so on.”

“I'm pretty good about getting some exercise every day - well, most days. The secret for me was to put the elliptical in front of the TV.”

“Tracing the beginnings of the interwoven stories of science can be arbitrary, as beginnings are so often lost in the mists of time.”

“Checking your telomere length is a bit like weighing yourself: you get this single number which depends on a lot of factors. Telomere length gives a sense of your underlying health.”

“The most dangerous cancer cells are actually the ones that are more like stem cells, which have this ability to produce themselves over and over again. More and more cancer biologists say stem-cell-like cells in cancers are the most dangerous.”

“In 2004, results from a study that I worked on with colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, linked chronic stress to shortening of telomeres.”

“Being senior enough in the field, having enough solidity, I don't feel afraid of being marginalized.”

“If a test showed you had telomere shortening, it would be a red flag suggesting you should take a look at possible risk factors.”

“I was using very unconventional methods to sequence the telemetric DNA, originally.”

“When scientists get old, they get interested in the brain, and I'm a little bit afraid I'm falling into that.”

“The conservative statement is that telomere length is a biomarker, but it's probably not passive. There are some very intimate relationships between things such as molecular markers for inflammation and telomere health.”

“Researchers have found that the brain definitely sends nerves directly to organs of the immune system and not just to the heart and the lower gut. In that way, too, the brain is influencing the body.”

“As maize became important for human food worldwide, modern agricultural research on maize breeding continued the corn breeding begun thousands of years ago in the Central American highlands.”

“In humans, the thing is that as we mature, our telomeres slowly wear down. So the question has always been: 'Did that matter?' Well, more and more, it seems like it matters.”

“We think there are lifestyle factors that boost telomerase naturally.”