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Biological Chemistry
Modern Myths
March 15, 2010
| A version of this story appeared in
Volume 88, Issue 11
In one version of Greek mythology, the future of each human life is determined by the Three Fates. Clotho spins the thread (chromosome?) of life. Lachesis measures the length of each human thread, and Atropos cuts the thread that ends life. I suggest that the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine winners, Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak, found a fourth Fate, namely Telomerase, who protects that chromosome thread from degradation.
Saul Ricklin
Bristol, R.I.
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