Abstract
Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein that synthesizes telomeric DNA onto chromosome termini and maintains the telomere length, and is expressed in immortal cells, stem cells, and germ cells. The objectives of the present investigation were to detect telomerase activity in the eyed embryos of rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss using stretch polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay and to estimate the relative telomerase activity and compare it with the value found in HeLa cells. High levels of telomerase activity could be detected quantitatively in the embryos using stretch PCR assay. Telomerase activity in embryos completely vanished using pretreatments with heating and RNase A. Relative telomerase activity per cell in embryos was 19.3-50.7-fold higher than that in HeLa cells. Conversely, relative activity on the basis of the protein amount showed no significant difference between the embryos and HeLa cells. This finding supports previous results in which high level expressions of telomerase are demonstrated in the normal cells and organs of fish species.
