Telomeres and the nucleus

Telomeres are crucial for the maintenance of genome stability through “capping” of chromosome ends to prevent their recognition as double-strand breaks, thus avoiding end-to-end fusions or illegitimate recombination [1], [2] and [3]. Similar to other genomic regions, telomeres participate to the nuclear architecture while being highly mobile. The interaction of telomeres with nuclear domains or compartments greatly differs not only between organisms but also between cells within the same organism. It is also expected that biological processes like replication, repair or telomere elongation impact the distribution of chromosome extremities within the nucleus, as they probably do with other regions of the genome. Pathological processes such as cancer induce profound changes in the nuclear architecture, which also affects telomere dynamics and spatial organization.Here we will expose our present knowledge on the relationship between telomeres and nuclear architecture and on how this relationship is affected by normal or abnormal telomere metabolisms.