Telomeromics
A wide variety of studies show the association of short telomeres with age related pathologies and cancer, as well as with lifespan and mortality.
These facts highlight the importance of measuring telomere length in human populations and by using reliable methods to uncover the association between telomere length and human disease.
The length of telomeres, and in particular the abundance of short telomeres, has been proposed as a biomarker of aging and of general health status.
Telomere length studies were started around 1980s and were initially based on Southern blot quantification of a smear of telomere restriction fragments, the so-called terminal restriction fragment (TRF) analysis
TRF analysis provides a rough estimate of the average number of telomeric repeats per sample, as terminal restriction fragments include not only telomeric repeats but also variable amounts of subtelomeric sequences
the development of telomere measurement methods based on telomeric Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH) solved the problem of accuracy and represented a breakthrough for telomere length quantification
The first telomere FISH based method developed was the so-called telomere quantitative FISH method or Q-FISH on metaphases which allows telomere length quantification of individual chromosome ends at the single-cell level, providing a quantification of both very short/undetectable telomeres and of the mean telomere length per cell
However, the conventional Q-FISH method is very time consuming and labor intensive, and therefore, not suitable for high-throughput (HT) assays
Reference
http://www.aging-us.com/article/SKg3CwiAcA7AgNETc/text