Matteo Fassan¹ and Raffaele Baffa² – biography

¹University of Verona, Verona – Italy
²Sanofi, Cambridge (MA) – USA

The genesis of the current non-coding RNAs’ scientific paradigm can easily be traced to the seminal discovery of a microRNA (miRNA or miR) gene in 1993 [1]. At that time, no one could have predicted that the discovery of these endogenous small non-coding molecules in Caenorhabditis elegans would have such a profound effect on future research on cancer biology and therapy. Following the original observation, miRNAs were completely overlooked for nearly a decade, becoming culturally relevant only in the first years of the 21^st century, when a link between miRNAs’ dysregulation and human cancer (i.e., miR-15a and miR-16-1 genes) was reported for the first time to be involved in the pathogenesis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia [2]. Continue reading →

Célia Baroux^1*, Daphné Autran² Michael T. Raissig¹, Daniel Grimanelli² and Ueli Grossniklaus¹ – Biography

¹Institute of Plant Biology & Zürich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zürich, Switzerland
²Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, UMR232; CNRS, ERL5300; Université de Montpellier II, France

In plants and animals, embryo development becomes ultimately controlled by zygotic genes, but the timing of zygotic genome activation (ZGA) varies greatly between organisms[1,2]. We recently showed that the transcriptome of young Arabidopsis embryos is dominated by maternal transcripts with a progressive ZGA under the maternal control of epigenetic pathways [3]. In contrast, another study reported that both parental genomes contribute equally to the transcriptome of young embryos, suggesting that ZGA occurs immediately after fertilization[4]. How to explain such dramatic differences? Continue reading →

Marian F. Young¹ and Justin R. Fallon ²- biography

¹National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
²Brown University, Providence RI, USA

Biglycan is an extracellular matrix component of many parts of the skeleton including bone, cartilage, tendon, teeth and muscle. Biglycan is predominantly expressed as a proteoglycan, but a mature form lacking GAG side chains (‘nonglycanated’) has recently been shown to have specific functions in muscle, synapses and Wnt signaling in bone. The biglycan gene is on the X (and not Y) chromosome and is dysregulated in Turner (XO) and Kleinfelter’s Syndromes (supernumery X) diseases, characterized by short and tall stature respectively. Continue reading →