Direct evidence (Chiu et al., 1996; Schepers et al., 2011) as well as the pathology of the telomerase-related disease dyskeratosis congenita in which patients with mutations in the telomere maintenance pathway present with bone marrow failure as well as lung, intestinal, and skin pathologies show that TERT is expressed in these highly proliferative tissues and is required for their long-term self-renewal capacity and ability to maintain tissue homeostasis (Armanios and Price, 2012; Aubert et al., 2012). The gene discussed is TERT; the disease is dyskeratosis congenita.