TY - JOUR T1 - The genetic basis of natural variation in <em>C. elegans</em> telomere length JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/051276 SP - 051276 AU - D.C. Cook AU - S. Zdraljevic AU - R.E. Tanny AU - B. Seo AU - D.D. Riccardi AU - L.M. Noble AU - M.V. Rockman AU - M.J. Alkema AU - C. Braendle AU - J.E. Kammenga AU - J. Wang AU - L. Kruglyak AU - M.A. FĂ©lix AU - J. Lee AU - E.C. Andersen Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/02/051276.abstract N2 - Telomeres are involved in the maintenance of chromosomes and the prevention of genome instability. Despite this central importance, significant variation in telomere length has been observed in a variety of organisms. The genetic determinants of telomere-length variation and their effects on organismal fitness are largely unexplored. Here, we describe natural variation in telomere length across the Caenorhabditis elegans species. We identify a large-effect variant that contributes to differences in telomere length. The variant alters the conserved oligosaccharide/oligonucleotide-binding fold of POT-2, a homolog of a human telomere-capping shelterin complex subunit. Mutations within this domain likely reduce the ability of POT-2 to bind telomeric DNA, thereby increasing telomere length. We find that telomere-length variation does not correlate with offspring production or longevity in C. elegans wild isolates, suggesting that naturally long telomeres play a limited role in modifying fitness phenotypes in C. elegans. ER -