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Do biological cells sense time by the number of their divisions, a processthat ends at senescence? We consider the question "can the cell's perception oftime be expressed through the length of the shortest telomere?" The answer isthat the absolute time before senescence cannot be expressed by the telomere'slength and that a cell can survive many more divisions than intuitivelyexpected. This apparent paradox is due to shortening and elongation of thetelomere, which suggests a random walk model of the telomere's length. Themodel indicates two phases, first, a determinist drift of the length toward aquasi-equilibrium state, and second, persistence of the length near anattracting state for the majority of divisions prior to senescence. The measureof stability of the latter phase is the expected number of divisions at theattractor ("lifetime") prior to crossing a threshold to senescence. Thetelomerase regulates stability by creating an effective potential barrier thatseparates statistically the shortest lifetime from the next shortest. Therandom walk has to overcome the barrier in order to extend the range of thefirst regime. The model explains how random telomere dynamics underlies theextension of cell survival time.

Do cells sense time by number of divisions?