telomere crisis
catastrophic telomere loss
Catastrophic losses of telomeric sequences have been described during apoptosis, senescence and tumorigenesis in murine and human cells, in ataxia telangiectasia patients and in immortalized cells in which telomerase is inactive.
References
Greenberg RA. Telomeres, crisis and cancer. Curr Mol Med. 2005 Mar;5(2):213-8. PMID: 15974875
Chin K, De Solorzano CO, Knowles D, Jones A, Chou W, Rodriguez EG, Kuo WL, Ljung BM, Chew K, Myambo K, Miranda M, Krig S, Garbe J, Stampfer M, Yaswen P, Gray JW, Lockett SJ. In situ analyses of genome instability in breast cancer. Nat Genet. 2004 Aug 8 PMID: 15300252
Lustig AJ. Clues to catastrophic telomere loss in mammals from yeast telomere rapid deletion. Nat Rev Genet. 2003 Nov;4(11):916-23. PMID: 14634639