METHODS AND REAGENTS FOR THE DETERMINATION OF TELOMERE LENGTH IN A SEMI-AUTOMATIC MANNER OF EVERY SINGLE CELL IN A IMMOBILIZED CELL POPULATION

摘要

The invention relates to methods and reagents for the determination of telomere length in tissue sections by the single cell telomeric mapping technique based on a fluorescent in situ hybridization step using a telomere-specif?c probe and an interpolation step using a standard curve correlating fluorescent intensity and telomere length obtained from a collection of cell lines of known telomere length. The invention further relates to methods for the identification of stem cell niches within tissues and for the identification of compounds capable of triggering stem cell mobilization using the telomere length as criteria for the identification of stem cells and which rely on the single cell telomeric mapping technique of the invention.