Markers of cellular senescence. Telomere shortening as a marker of cellular senescence

Alexandra Bernadotte^1,², Victor M. Mikhelson³, Irina M. Spivak^3,^4,⁵

¹Karolinska Institute, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Stockholm, 14157, Sweden
²St. Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint-Petersburg, 197110 Russia
³Institute of Cytology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint-Petersburg, 194064, Russia
⁴Saint-Petersburg's State University, Saint-Petersburg, 199034, Russia
⁵Saint-Petersburg's Polytechnic State University, Saint-Petersburg, 195251 Russia

* * Equal contribution

Received: December 12, 2014Accepted: January 18, 2016Published: January 23, 2016

Copyright: © 2016 Bernadotte et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

The cellular senescence definition comes to the fact of cells irreversible proliferation disability. Besides the cell cycle arrest, senescent cells go through some morphological, biochemical, and functional changes which are the signs of cellular senescence. The senescent cells (including replicative senescence and stress-induced premature senescence) of all the tissues look alike. They are metabolically active and possess the set of characteristics in vitro and in vivo, which are known as biomarkers of aging and cellular senescence. Among biomarkers of cellular senescence telomere shortening is a rather elegant frequently used biomarker. Validity of telomere shortening as a marker for cellular senescence is based on theoretical and experimental data.