Our Australia: Elizabeth Blackburn

In the year 2009 Prof Elizabeth Helen Blackburn and her team won the Nobel Prize. They made a discovery that explained how DNA eventually begins to deteriorate and how that ages us. They found out that young DNA is protected by little 'caps', called telomeres, at the end of our chromosomes. These caps, with the help of an enzyme called telomerase, stop our chromosomes from deteriorating. Telomeres also thought to play a key role in cancers. If telomerase can be controlled these cancers may be preventable in the future. Remadevi Dhanasekar of 4EB of Tamil radio service explains the achievements of Elizabeth Helen Blackburn in “Namma Australia”.