Dr. Hidetoshi Tahara is looking for the keys to aging and cancer. That’s why he (and other scientists) are studying telomeres— the caps on the ends of our chromosomes that keep our genetic data from unraveling. Think of telomeres as the plastic tips on your shoelaces … or as the fuse to a bomb. T elomeres get shorter each time a cell divides. T oo short, and the cell can no longer divide. It becomes inactive or dies. Dr. T ahara’s laboratory

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