4 ms·
Scott and Mark are great. Interesting note: "Once Scott returned to the ground, the length of his telomeres returned to his pre-flight levels relatively quickl
by wodencafe 10y ago
Scott and Mark are great. Interesting note:
"Once Scott returned to the ground, the length of his telomeres returned to his pre-flight levels relatively quickly. "
- swsieber 10y agoSo if my intuition is applicable (which it's probably not)- it's longer because it stretches out, not because it's accumulating material? I assume that's not really possible though...
- daemonk 10y agoTelomere length is not measured by physical length. It is measured by the actual number of repeats of the sequence.
- philsnow 10y agowell, isn't the telomere sequence just some sequence of base pairs, and all base pairs are the same length ? from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_pair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_pair : > one bp corresponds to approximately 3.4 Å (340 pm) of length along the strand so physical length and number of repeats of the sequence are the same, by some factor.
- daemonk 10y agoSure. But the question assumed that the physical length can be variable depending on the environment. Even if that was the case, measurement of telomeres by the sequence themselves will be independent of environmental factor. Maybe this is not the perfect analogy, but the character 'a' and the character 'A' might have different heights, but they still represent the same letter of the alphabet.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chadgeidel 10y agoThank you for asking this question I was too afraid to ask. And daemonk - thank you for answering without snark. I love this place!