Telomere Length Measurement - TeloSMRT

Sierra Sciences has designed a protocol called TeloSMRT for measuring telomere lengths that utilizes a “Long-Read” DNA sequencing protocol called Single Molecule Real Time (SMRT) sequencing. Long Read Sequencing has recently provided the scientific and medical communities with the ability to obtain full length chromosome sequences from Telomere-To-Telomere. But the sequences are NOT Telomere-Through-Telomere because the protocols to do Long Read DNA sequencing have no way to show that the very tip of the telomere has been reached during the read.

Sierra Sciences has invented a way, using our proprietary adapters and primers, to show that the very tip of the telomere has been reached during a read. Using our proprietary method to do Long-Read sequencing Sierra Sciences will be able to know:

1. The length of each telomere
2. Which type of chromosome and chromosome arm each telomere belongs to
3. The sequence of the telomere. Heritable aberrations in the telomere sequences have been discovered but their role in the disease process has never been described.
4. The variation in length and sequence among telomeres from the same type of chromosome and chromosome arm (such as the p arm of Chromosome 7 versus the p arm of another Chromosome 7)
5. And the variation in length and sequence among other types of chromosome and chromosome arms (such as the p arm of Chromosome 7 versus the q arm of Chromosome 12)

Knowing the length and sequence of telomeres from each chromosome and chromosome arm allows the study of the role of each chromosome arm in the manifestation of various telomeropathies. The TeloSMRT protocol will provide many significant medical diagnoses for individual patients that no other telomere length measurement protocol can.

Several methods exist today to measure telomere lengths. They include:

1. Terminal Restriction Fragment (TRF) analysis
2. Q-PCR
3. Flow-FISH
4. HT Q-FISH
5. STELA
6. Universal STELA

However, none of these protocols are very accurate. They also cannot reliably identify which chromosome the telomere is from, and they cannot identify heritable aberrations in the telomere sequences. Nevertheless, the best protocol today is called HT Q-FISH because it will provide not just the “average telomere length” but the “Percent of Telomeres that are Critically Short”. But it is also the most expensive commercially available protocol. In short, telomere length measurement today is only useful in large population studies and is not reliable enough to provide an individual person with a meaningful, reproducible result.

Sierra Sciences has designed two protocols, called AutoFISH and TeloSMRT to measure telomere lengths. AutoFISH that is very similar to HT Q-FISH but is far more affordable than HT Q-FISH because it doesn’t require the use of microscopy. TeloSMRT is a very informative telomere length measurement protocol that measures telomeres very accurately and provides more information than just their length.

A recent review of the field can be found at https://bisouv.com/uncategorized/3560392/cellular-health-single-test-panel-market-2021-data-analysis-and-brief-review/

According to https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cellular-health-screening-test-market-227041930.html the global cellular health screening market, that includes telomere length measurement, is estimated to reach USD 3.42 billion by 2022 from USD 2.12 billion in 2017, at a CAGR of 10.0% during the forecast period.

TeloSMRT

Assembly Research Required

Estimated Time: 1 Year

Employees:

2 Molecular Biologists (Scientists) that are skilled in nucleic acid chemistry.

Lab Space: 400 sf ($130/sf)

Office Space: 100 sf ($130/sf)