Meeting Abstract
Early life telomeres, protective caps at the end of eukaryotic chromosomes, are predictive of lifespan. Exposure to chronic stress during development can have long-term consequences on individual fitness and longevity. Chronic stress can detrimentally impact an organism through shortening of telomeres, which limits cellular lifespan. However, telomerase, an enzyme that lengthens telomeres, has been shown to upregulate in times of chronic stress in adult mice. Telomerase is made up of two subunits: a reverse transcriptase protein (TERT) and the RNA template (TERC). To better understand the impacts of chronic stress during development, we measured TERT gene expression in early life of house sparrow nestlings in response to chronic stress. Nestlings were randomly assigned a stress or control treatment group, and the stress treatment group received handling in a cloth bag for 30 minutes, daily, from 3 to 10 days post-hatch. At 10 days post-hatch, tissue samples were collected for TERT expression and telomere analysis. We predicted that experimentally stressed nestlings would have higher TERT gene expression than control nestlings. Variation in TERT expression could have important effects on telomeres and contribute to individual differences in resilience to stress exposure.
