The symphony of the human genome concludes with a long Gregorian chant of TTAGGG repeats. This monotonous coda represents one of the most complex problems in chromosome biology: the question of how cells distinguish their natural chromosome ends from double-strand breaks elsewhere in the genome. McClintock's classic finding of chromosome breakage-fusion-bridge cycles, first reported by her at one of the early Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Symposia (the ninth), served as a prelude to this question. The 75th Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Symposium marks the completion of a series of mouse gene deletion experiments that revealed DNA-damage-response pathways that threaten chromosome ends and how the components of the telomeric shelterin complex prevent activation of these pathways.