| Summary: | The reactivation of telomerase in cancer cells remains incompletely understood. The catalytic component of telomerase, <i>hTERT</i>, is thought to be the limiting component in cancer cells for the formation of active enzymes. <i>hTERT</i> gene expression is regulated at several levels including chromatin, DNA methylation, transcription factors, and RNA processing events. Of these regulatory events, RNA processing has received little attention until recently. RNA processing and alternative splicing regulation have been explored to understand how <i>hTERT</i> is regulated in cancer cells. The <i>cis</i>- and <i>trans</i>-acting factors that regulate the alternative splicing choice of <i>hTERT</i> in the reverse transcriptase domain have been investigated. Further, it was discovered that the splicing factors that promote the production of full-length <i>hTERT</i> were also involved in cancer cell growth and survival. The goals are to review telomerase regulation via alternative splicing and the function of <i>hTERT</i> splicing variants and to point out how bioinformatics approaches are leading the way in elucidating the networks that regulate <i>hTERT</i> splicing choice and ultimately cancer growth.
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