TERT and pulmonary fibrosis: In particular, owing to the fact that short telomeres per se in the context of the telomerase-deficient mouse model are not sufficient to induce pulmonary fibrosis in mice (Alder et al., 2011), we previously generated a mouse model for pulmonary fibrosis associated with short telomeres by treating telomerase-deficient mice from the second (G2) and fourth (G4) generation, G2-G4 Tert-/- with a low dose of bleomycin (0.5 mg/kg body weight).