Hayflick limit
Límite de Hayflick
- Date
- 1961 · confidence high
- Place
- Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
- Credited to
- Leonard Hayflick
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Hayflick showed that normal human cells in culture divide only 40 to 60 times before entering senescence, refuting the earlier belief that they were immortal. The limit is explained by the progressive shortening of telomeres with each division.
The molecular mechanism (telomere shortening) was established later, through the work of Elizabeth Blackburn and others on telomerase in the 1980s-1990s.
What it led to
- The modern understanding of cellular ageing
- An explanation of why cancer cells, which express telomerase, escape the limit