Telomerase structural biology comes of age

Telomerase is an RNA-protein complex comprising telome-rase reverse transcriptase, a non-coding telomerase RNA, and proteins involved in biogenesis, assembly, localization, or recruitment. Telomerase synthesizes the telomeric DNA at the 30-ends of linear chromosomes. During the past decade, structural studies have defined the architecture of Tetrahy-mena and human telomerase as well as protein and RNA domain structures, but high-resolution details of interactions remained largely elusive. In the past two years, several sub-4 angstrom cryo-electron microscopy structures of telomerase were published, including Tetrahymena telomerase at different steps of telomere repeat addition and human telomerase with telo-mere shelterin proteins that recruit telomerase to telomeres. These and other recent structural studies have expanded our understanding of telomerase assembly, mechanism, recruit-ment, and mutations leading to disease.

Automated summary

Telomerase is an RNA-protein complex that synthesizes telomeric DNA at the ends of linear chromosomes. Recent structural studies have provided insights into telomerase assembly, mechanism, recruitment, and disease-related mutations.