Here's something interesting I came across the other day: researchers have found an apparent causal connection between telomere length and aging in mice -- TRF2 overexpression resulting in critically short telomeres and an apparently prematurely aging phenotype.
I have not been keeping up with this that well, but I thought comparing this new paper to DePinho et al's older paper (2000) was interesting because they found that mTR knockout mice, although exhibiting a range of unpleasant symptoms (including a shorter life span), did not in their analysis show the full range of age-related degeneration.
I'm curious what the prevailing view here is regarding the role telomeres play in the aging process -- clearly there's a correlation, but do you think there might be a causal link, as well?