telomerase

American

[tuh-lom-uh-rays, -rayz] / təˈlɒm əˌreɪs, -ˌreɪz /

noun

an enzyme, active chiefly in tumors and reproductive cells, that causes telomeres to lengthen: facilitates cell division and may account for the immortality of cancer cells.

telomerase British

/ tɛˈlɒməˌreɪz /

noun

an enzyme that is involved in the formation and repair of telomeres, so that chromosomes are not shortened during cell division

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

telomerase Scientific

/ tə-lŏm′ə-rās′,-rāz′ /

An enzyme that preserves the length of telomeres across cell divisions in germ cells, stem cells, and most cancer cells. A kind of reverse transcriptase, telomerase is an RNA-containing enzyme that synthesizes the DNA of telomeres by reverse transcription. It is active during DNA replication and is thought to play a role in the proliferation and apparent immortality of cells in which it is present. In cells that lack telomerase (that is, in most somatic cells of the body), the telomeres of chromosomes shorten and eventually disappear over repeated cell divisions. The inhibition of telomerase is being investigated as a method of killing cancerous cells.
See more at telomere

Etymology

Origin of telomerase

telomere + -ase

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

telomerase

"Now we have an answer to the underlying cause of some of these short telomere disease mutations: it is a result of RPA not being able to stimulate telomerase."

From Science Daily ● Dec. 11, 2025

Researchers at Rockefeller recently showed that this process is mediated by two enzymes: telomerase and the CST-Polα/primase complex.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2024

"This is a major focus of our lab, and one of the reasons we'll be looking into the interplay between CST-Polα/primase and telomerase more closely in the future."

From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2024

Without telomerase, telomeres would get shorter and shorter as a cell divides over and over again.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 11, 2024

By the early nineties, a scientist at Yale had used HeLa to discover that human cancer cells contain an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds their telomeres.

From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023