Optimization of Performance Parameters of the TAGGG Telomere Length Assay

The scope of our research involves measuring telomere length differences across various study groups. The questions we are trying to answer revolve around diseases of physiological conditions and how they may affect telomere length and vice versa. The technology is currently used to advance research in the field of telomere length biology are nanopore sequencing and more recently CRISPR Cas based measurement.

Current experimental challenges are accurately measuring absolute telomere length and the changes in it. The same sample could give varying results when different methods of measuring telomere length are used. The research gap we address is the lack of a standard method to measure telomere length.

Telomere restriction fragment analysis or TRF, is still the standard against which all new techniques are evaluated. Also, our optimized protocols helps in processing a higher number of samples with limited resources. Our findings will help advance research in the field of telomere length biologic by providing a reliable and relatively economical way to compare newer methods to the gold standard, which is TRF.

Our laboratory will focus on the effects of small molecule inhibitors on telomere length. We will also study the impact that lifestyle diseases and telomere length have on on each other.