Abstract
Although the dynamics of telomeres during the life expectancy of normal cells have been extensively studied, there are still some unresolved issues regarding this research field. For example, the conditions required for telomere shortening leading to malignant transformation are not fully understood. In this work, we mass analyzed DNA of normal and cancer cells for comparing telomere isotopic compositions of white blood cells and cancer cells. We have found that the 1327 Da and 1672 Da characteristic telomere mass to charge cause differential mass distributions of about 1 Da for determining isotopic variations among normal cells relative to cancer cells. These isotopic differences are consistent with a prior theory that replacing primordial isotopes of 1H, 12C, 14N, 16O, 24Mg, 31P and/or 32S by nonprimordial, uncommon isotopes of 2D, 13C, 15N, 17O, 25Mg and/or 33S leads to altered enzymatic dynamics for modulating DNA and telomere codons towards transforming normal cells to cancer cells. The prior theory and current data are consistent also with a recently observed non-uniform methylation in DNA of cancer cells relative to more uniform methylation in DNA of normal cells.