ALT Telomeres Get Together with Nuclear Receptors

Nuclear receptors bind chromosome ends in alternative lengthening of telomeres'' (ALT) cancer cells that maintain their ends by homologous recombination instead of telomerase. Marzec et al. now demonstrate that, in ALT cells, nuclear receptors not only trigger distal chromatin associations to mediate telomere-telomere recombination events, but also drive chromosome-internal targeted telomere insertions (TTI).