@article{2915efc2abac4cf7b810c7e3ae1db371,
title = "The genetic basis of natural variation in Caenorhabditis elegans telomere length",
abstract = "Telomeres are involved in the maintenance of chromosomes and the prevention of genome instability. Despite this central importance, significant variation in telomere length has been observed in a variety of organisms. The genetic determinants of telomerelength variation and their effects on organismal fitness are largely unexplored. Here, we describe natural variation in telomere length across the Caenorhabditis elegans species. We identify a large-effect variant that contributes to differences in telomere length. The variant alters the conserved oligonucleotide/oligosaccharide-binding fold of protection of telomeres 2 (POT-2), a homolog of a human telomere-capping shelterin complex subunit. Mutations within this domain likely reduce the ability of POT-2 to bind telomeric DNA, thereby increasing telomere length. We find that telomere-length variation does not correlate with offspring production or longevity in C. elegans wild isolates, suggesting that naturally long telomeres play a limited role in modifying fitness phenotypes in C. elegans.",
keywords = "Caenorhabditis elegans, QTL, Shelterin, Telomere length, Whole-genome sequence",
author = "Cook, {Daniel E.} and Stefan Zdraljevic and Tanny, {Robyn E.} and Beomseok Seo and Riccardi, {David D.} and Noble, {Luke M.} and Rockman, {Matthew V.} and Alkema, {Mark J.} and Christian Braendle and Kammenga, {Jan E.} and John Wang and Leonid Kruglyak and F{\'e}lix, {Marie Anne} and Junho Lee and Andersen, {Erik C.}",
note = "Funding Information: We thank Joshua Bloom and members of the Andersen laboratory for critical comments on this manuscript. We also thank M. Barkoulas, T. B{\'e}licard, D. Bourc{\textquoteright}his, N. Callemeyn-Torre, S. Carvalho, J.Dumont, L. Fr{\'e}zal, C.-Y. Kao, L. Lokmane, I. Ly, K. Ly, A. Paaby, J. Riksen, and G.Wang for isolating new wild C. elegans strains. The National Bioresource Project provided the FX1400 strain, and Wormbase data made a variety of analyses possible. This work was supported by a National Institutes of Health R01 subcontract to E.C.A. (GM-107227), the Chicago Biomedical Consortium with support from the Searle Funds at the Chicago Community Trust, and an American Cancer Society Research Scholar grant to E.C.A. (127313-RSG-15-135-01-DD), along with support from the Cell and Molecular Basis of Disease training grant (T32GM008061) to S.Z. and from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (DGE-1324585) to D.E.C. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2016 by the Genetics Society of America.",
year = "2016",
month = sep,
doi = "10.1534/genetics.116.191148",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "204",
pages = "371--383",
journal = "Genetics",
issn = "0016-6731",
publisher = "Genetics Society of America",
number = "1",
}