Montagna Symposium 2015: Harnessing Stem Cells to Reveal Novel Skin Biology and Disease Treatments

Abstract

The 64th annual Montagna Symposium on the Biology of the Skin, “Harnessing Stem Cells to Reveal Novel Skin Biology and Disease Treatments,” was held from 15e19 October 2015 in Gleneden Beach, Oregon. The meeting brought together scientists in academia and industry working on mechanisms of skin homeostasis, regeneration, and tumorigenesis and trainees who wanted to learn more about stem cells in the skin. The Symposium was chaired by Xiao-Jing Wang and Valerie Horsley with Session Chairs Mayumi Ito, Rui Yi, and John McGrath. The meeting opened with a Keynote presentation by Haifan Lin, Director of Stem Cell Center at Yale University, who unfolded the history of the discovery of RNAs that regulate gene expression and control stem cell activity. In particular, Dr. Lin discussed the intergenic regions within eukaryotic genomes that contain multiple DNA sequences that are not transcribed into protein-coding genes, including transposons, pseudogenes, long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), and P-element induced wimpy testis-interacting RNAs (piRNAs). Data from Dr. Lin’s laboratory have revealed that piRNAs can be derived from transposons and pseudogenes and play a major role in degrading mRNAs and lncRNAs in spermatocytes in mice. These data place piRNAs in a core RNA regulatory pathway modulating other RNA species to influence gene expression during meiosis. These exciting new