ORCID iD
Boratynski, Zbyszek
0000-0003-4668-4922
Kivisaari, Kati
0000-0001-8892-2947
Milinevsky, Gennadi
0000-0002-2342-2615
Mappes, Tapio
0000-0002-5936-7355
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Telomeres, the protective structures at the ends of chromosomes, can be shortened when individuals are exposed to stress. In some species, the enzyme telomerase is expressed in adult somatic tissues, and potentially protects or lengthens telomeres. Telomeres can be damaged by ionizing radiation and oxidative stress, although the effect of chronic exposure to elevated levels of radiation on telomere maintenance is unknown for natural populations. We quantified telomerase expression and telomere length (TL) in different tissues of the bank vole Myodes glareolus, collected from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, an environment heterogeneously contaminated with radionuclides, and from uncontaminated control sites elsewhere in Ukraine. Inhabiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone was associated with reduced TL in the liver and testis, and upregulation of telomerase in brain and liver. Thus upregulation of telomerase does not appear to associate with longer telomeres but may reflect protective functions other than telomere maintenance or an attempt to maintain shorter telomeres in a stressful environment. Tissue specific differences in the rate of telomere attrition and apparent radiosensitivity weaken the intra-individual correlation in telomere length among tissues in voles exposed to radionuclides. Our data show that ionizing radiation alters telomere homeostasis in wild animal populations in tissue specific ways.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in Scientific Reports, Volume 9, Issue 850, 2019.
Rights
© The Author(s) 2019 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
APA Citation
Kesäniemi, J., Lavrinienko, A., Tukalenko, E., Boratyński, Z., Kivisaari, K., Mappes, T., Milinevsky, G., Møller, A. P., Mousseau, T. A., & Watts, P. C. (2019). Exposure to Environmental Radionuclides Associates With Tissue-Specific Impacts on Telomerase Expression and Telomere Length. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 85 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-37164-8.