Construction of antisense hTR gene in retroviral vector

Human chromosomes terminate with severalkilobases of the simple telomere repeat (TTAGGG) n.Telomeres protect the chromosomes from DNAdegradation, end-to-end fusion, rearrangements andchromosome losses. Since DNA polymerasessynthesize DNA in the 5’ to 3’ direction and require aRNA primer for initiation, telomeric DNA could belost at chromosome ends unless the termini arespecifically extended by telomerase. Telomerase is aspecialized ribonucleoprotein polymerase that containsan integral RNA with a short template element