Telomere Length

We are excited to offer Telomere Length detected by methylation in all TruAge Collections. 

What Are Telomeres?

Telomeres are repeating sequences of nucleotide base-pairs at the very end of all your chromosomes.

They don’t carry your essential genetic data, but they do protect it. 

In actively dividing cells (like embryo stem cells, bone marrow, and germ cells that later become sperm or ovary cells), telomere length is kept constant by the enzyme telomerase

If we didn’t have telomeres, genetic information from the DNA on the ends of the chromosomes would be lost every time a cell divided.

Over time and as the organism grows into an adult, the telomerase enzyme becomes less active. When the telomerase enzyme is no longer repairing them, your telomeres begin to steadily shorten during cell division. 

Of course, your body generally doesn’t want to harm your genetic code. When the telomeres reach their shortest length, your cells take that as a sign to stop replicating.  When a cell stops replicating, but sticks around to use up nutrients instead of being broken down by the body, that’s called cellular senescence

Cell replication is necessary for healing and growing, so this process of telomere shortening and eventually stopping replication is widely accepted to be one of several factors that causes tissues to age. (T.Lu et al., 2019)

Why is Telomere Length important?

Telomeres are an essential part of human cells, and affect how our cells age. Telomere Length has emerged as an important determinant of cell fate. What happens to your cells at the end of their lifespan – and how quickly they arrive at that end – is an important indicator of the aging process and a wide variety of diseases. People with significantly shorter telomeres are 3x more likely to die from heart disease, and 8x more likely to die from infectious diseases. (M. Shammas, 2011)

Shorter telomere length and low telomerase activity are associated with several chronic preventable diseases.

What's Included?

Your Average Telomere Length

Your telomere length is measured in Kb, or ‘kilobases.’ 

A kilobase is 1,000 base-pairs.  Humans can have between 2 and 50 kilobases, but adults average between 5-15.
(
Butler et al., 1998

Each time a cell replicates, 20-200 base-pairs are lost from the end of its telomeres.

So if you have more base-pairs remaining and you lose a smaller amount each replication, then your cells will be able to replicate more times before reaching senescence.  

Your Telomere Age

Due to the strong link between DNA Methylation (a type of epigenetic marker, and our lab’s specialty) we can now offer an accurate Telomere Length estimation using your Methylation data, to show what ‘Telomere Age’ your telomere length indicates you are. 

Telomere Age offers another metric to reveal your body’s aging process, focused on cellular replication and cellular fate. 

Compare against the average

Based on your Telomere Length and birth year, you can compare your telomere length against people who share your birthday. 

For example, if a man is 68 chronological years old and has a Telomere Length of 7.1Kb, he is in the 90th percentile – his telomeres are longer than 90% of men his age. 

Telomere Age that focuses on cellular replication and cellular fate

These, along with our trait reports and advanced metrics, work together to form a larger picture of your ever-changing health and lifespan.