At first glance, I thought Dr. Blackburn’s research was a bit esoteric. Telomerase? Telomere? What are these things and why should I care? Then I began digging into these terms and her work. I now care, perhaps you should too!
Telomerase is an enzyme that elongates telomeres. Telomeres are repetitive sequences at the end of a chromosome that keep the ends from deteriorating. It’s not good for your chromosomes to unravel at the ends. If the ends are damaged, the chromosome can’t replicate properly. Your cells are going to die, and so will you.
Dr. Blackburn and Carol Greider discovered telomerase in 1984. How do you find something like that? They used substances labeled with radioactivity to permeate the cells they were studying. The radioactive substances distributed themselves such that they were able to see patterns of telomerase activity—the telomerase enzyme reaction. Not to worry about the radioactive substances, you need to be careful with them, but they aren’t going to kill you unless you ingest them. The radioactivity creates an image on an emulsion that is similar to a photograph, but it is called an autoradiograph. It’s a technique used a lot in biological research.
Image under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, by Bengt Oberger.
As cool as this research seems, I was struggling to find how this particular discovery might impact my life. Then I found a paper with Dr. Blackburn as fifth author: Can meditation slow rate of cellular aging? Cognitive stress, mindfulness, and telomeres. That got my attention! If mindfulness meditation can slow my cells from aging, sign me up!
Perhaps this excerpt will entice you to read the entire article:
“We review data linking telomere length to cognitive stress and stress arousal and present new data linking cognitive appraisal to telomere length. Given the pattern of associations revealed so far, we propose that some forms of meditation may have salutary effects on telomere length by reducing cognitive stress and stress arousal and increasing positive states of mind and hormonal factors that may promote telomere maintenance.“
Dr. Blackburn is a great champion of science. In 2002 she was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics. However, because she opposed the Bush Administration, she was taken off the council n 2004.
"There is a growing sense that scientific research—which, after all, is defined by the quest for truth—is being manipulated for political ends” Elizabeth Blackburn