John A. Double and Michael J. Thompson have collected a critically important series of novel and essential techniques for studying telomeres and telomerase. These readily reproducible methods provide cutting-edge tools to identify, measure, and analyze telomeres, to determine telomerase expression at the RNA level, to determine telomerase activity, and to detect potential modifiers of this activity. The techniques for assaying telomerase activity range from standard radiological TRAP assays to nonradioactive methods, from non PCR-based methods to techniques using real-time PCR. Telomeres and Telomerase: Methods and Protocols provides the core array of productive techniques needed today to develop telomerase inhibitors or diagnostic/prognostic telomerase markers.