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Cumulative stress in research animals: Telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context?
Progress in improving animal welfare is currently limited by the lack of objective methods for assessing lifetime experience. I propose that telomere attrition, a cellular biomarker of biological age, provides a molecular measure of cumulative experience that could be used to assess the welfare impa...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2015
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4737400/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26645576 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bies.201500127 |
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author | Bateson, Melissa |
author_facet | Bateson, Melissa |
author_sort | Bateson, Melissa |
collection | PubMed |
description | Progress in improving animal welfare is currently limited by the lack of objective methods for assessing lifetime experience. I propose that telomere attrition, a cellular biomarker of biological age, provides a molecular measure of cumulative experience that could be used to assess the welfare impact of husbandry regimes and/or experimental procedures on non‐human animals. I review evidence from humans that telomere attrition is accelerated by negative experiences in a cumulative and dose‐dependent manner, but that this attrition can be mitigated or even reversed by positive life‐style interventions. Evidence from non‐human animals suggests that despite some specific differences in telomere biology, stress‐induced telomere attrition is a robust phenomenon, occurring in a range of species including mice and chickens. I conclude that telomere attrition apparently integrates positive and negative experience in an accessible common currency that translates readily to novel species – the Holy Grail of a cumulative welfare indicator. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4737400 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-47374002016-02-12 Cumulative stress in research animals: Telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context? Bateson, Melissa Bioessays Prospects & Overviews Progress in improving animal welfare is currently limited by the lack of objective methods for assessing lifetime experience. I propose that telomere attrition, a cellular biomarker of biological age, provides a molecular measure of cumulative experience that could be used to assess the welfare impact of husbandry regimes and/or experimental procedures on non‐human animals. I review evidence from humans that telomere attrition is accelerated by negative experiences in a cumulative and dose‐dependent manner, but that this attrition can be mitigated or even reversed by positive life‐style interventions. Evidence from non‐human animals suggests that despite some specific differences in telomere biology, stress‐induced telomere attrition is a robust phenomenon, occurring in a range of species including mice and chickens. I conclude that telomere attrition apparently integrates positive and negative experience in an accessible common currency that translates readily to novel species – the Holy Grail of a cumulative welfare indicator. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015-12-08 2016-02 /pmc/articles/PMC4737400/ /pubmed/26645576 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bies.201500127 Text en © 2015 The Author. BioEssays published by WILEY Periodicals, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Prospects & Overviews Bateson, Melissa Cumulative stress in research animals: Telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context? |
title | Cumulative stress in research animals: Telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context? |
title_full | Cumulative stress in research animals: Telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context? |
title_fullStr | Cumulative stress in research animals: Telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context? |
title_full_unstemmed | Cumulative stress in research animals: Telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context? |
title_short | Cumulative stress in research animals: Telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context? |
title_sort | cumulative stress in research animals: telomere attrition as a biomarker in a welfare context? |
topic | Prospects & Overviews |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4737400/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26645576 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bies.201500127 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT batesonmelissa cumulativestressinresearchanimalstelomereattritionasabiomarkerinawelfarecontext |