Berlin felt deserted at 8 a.m. on a Monday during vacation time and I got to enjoy the fresh and shiny morning. It was odd hear about the processes of aging to my first plenary lecture of the XX. Genetics congress and .

Then again, Elizabeth Blackburn’s (UCSF) presentation was quite jolly and the amazing processes around telomeres and telomerases were stunning even if they are text book knowledge by now.

After the initial presentation of the basic players and the consequences in senescence, cancer and activities in regular tissue, she started to discuss high level implications of psychological stress and telomerase activities that felt almost dubious in contrast to the basic molecular biology presented earlier.

I seemed to have not been alone with that uneasiness and picked up similar comments on the way out the auditorium. Not that I have any grounds to doubt her findings. I might be simply old school when it comes to studying genetics and psychiatry side by side. In the context of Elizabeth Blackburn’s complete work, this seems to be a rather minor part anyway and I wished there would have been more time for discussion of the matter. Nonetheless, that was a very nice start.