Summary
A committee of RNA biologists is organizing an international meeting from October 12-16, 2008 regarding messenger RNA stability that will also include discussions of mechanisms of translational control. This meeting is the 3rd in a series, the first two of which were held in Europe at Florence, Italy in 2003 and at Arolla, Switzerland in 2005. This 2008 meeting is scheduled to take place in Asheville, North Carolina at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, a venue that is proximal to the institutions of many of the planned attendees. The organizing committee for the 2008 meeting consists of Jack Keene (Duke Univ. Med. Ctr.), Perry Blackshear (NIEHS), Gary Brewer (UMDNJ, R.W. Johnson Med. School), Myriam Gorospe (NIA) and David Port (Univ. Colorado HSC). Paul Anderson (Harvard Medical School) is an ad hoc member of the committee. The invited speakers for this meeting represent the most outstanding researchers in the field of RNA stability whose work spans many different biological systems and organisms. The topic of RNA stability has broad disease implications including cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative, aging, inflammatory and infectious diseases, and in fact, most other human diseases. Thus, the disease implications are very broad and the committee has elected to invite speakers who encompass several areas of investigation of RNA stability using model organisms as well as mammalian systems. The committee intends to publish a summary of the meeting similar to one in EMBO Reports 7, 143-148 (2006) following the meeting in 2005.