Estimating telomere length from whole genome sequence data

Zhihao Ding; Massimo Mangino; Abraham Aviv; Tim Spector; Richard Durbin; UK10K Consortium

doi:10.1093/nar/gku181

Estimating telomere length from whole genome sequence data

Nucleic Acids Res. 2014 May;42(9):e75. doi: 10.1093/nar/gku181. Epub 2014 Mar 7.

Authors

Zhihao Ding¹, Massimo Mangino², Abraham Aviv³, Tim Spector², Richard Durbin⁴; UK10K Consortium

Collaborators

Affiliations

¹ Genome Informatics, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, CB10 1SA, UK.
² Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London, London, WC2R 2LS, UK.
³ The Center for Human Development and Aging, New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ 07103, USA.
⁴ Genome Informatics, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, CB10 1SA, UK [email protected].

Abstract

Telomeres play a key role in replicative ageing and undergo age-dependent attrition in vivo. Here, we report a novel method, TelSeq, to measure average telomere length from whole genome or exome shotgun sequence data. In 260 leukocyte samples, we show that TelSeq results correlate with Southern blot measurements of the mean length of terminal restriction fragments (mTRFs) and display age-dependent attrition comparably well as mTRFs.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Twin Study

MeSH terms

Adult
Aged
Base Sequence
Cross-Sectional Studies
Exome
Genome, Human
Humans
Leukocytes / physiology
Middle Aged
Models, Genetic
Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid
Sequence Analysis, DNA*
Software
Telomere / genetics*
Telomere Homeostasis

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding