When a cell's chromosomes lose their ends, the cell usually
kills itself to stem the genetic damage. But University of Utah
biologists discovered how those cells can evade suicide and
start down the path to cancer. Details of how the process works
someday may provide new ways to treat cancer. The new study of
fruit flies is the first to show in animals that losing just one
telomere – the end of a chromosome – can lead to many
abnormalities in a cell's chromosomes, which are strands of DNA
that carry genes. "The essential point is that loss of a single
telomere may be a primary event that puts a cell on the road to
cancer," says Kent Golic, a professor of biology at the
University of Utah and senior author of the study, which will be
published online this week in the December issue of the journal
Genetics. Fruit flies have four pairs of chromosomes. Humans
have 23 pairs. Each chromosome has two ends, called telomeres,
which often are compared with the plastic tips of shoe laces.
When those tips are lost or bre