In their 2016 study using five cancer cell lines of four different origins and two embryonic stem cell lines, the Tergaonkar lab observed that TERT expression level is proportional to the rates of cell proliferation and protein synthesis, and that TERT is particularly enriched at genomic regions corresponding to RNA polymerase III (pol III)-driven tRNA genes in a TERC-independent manner [114]. The gene discussed is TERT; the disease is cancer.