Telomeres are essential nucleoprotein structures at the very ends of linear eukaryote chromosomes. They shelter the terminal genome territories against degradation and prevent the natural chromosome ends from being recognized by repair mechanisms as double-strand DNA breaks.There are two basic characteristics of telomeric DNA, its sequence and its length. The telomere sequence is important as a "landing area" for specific telomere-binding proteins, which function as signals and moderate the interactions required for correct telomere function. While the sequence forms the proper "landing surface" of telomeric DNA, its length is similarly important. Too short or exceptionally long telomere DNA cannot perform its function properly. In this chapter, methods for the investigation of these two basic telomere DNA characteristics are described, namely, telomere motif identification and telomere length measurement.

Department of Cell Biology and Radiobiology Institute of Biophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences Brno Czech Republic

Mendel Centre for Plant Genomics and Proteomics Central European Institute of Technology Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

National Centre for Biomolecular Research Faculty of Science Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

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