The final day of RNA Canada ARN 2024 was a fitting end to a fantastic conference!
The morning started with the last concurrent scientific sessions: the first was about Ribonucleoprotein granules and RNA in motion, with talks featuring tools for granule detection as well as talks about condensates and granules pertaining to antiviral pathways, splicing, trafficking and ribosome association. The second session, about RNA processing and maturation, featured several talks about alternative splicing, and also telomerase and RNA interference, while the third session, entitled “RNA biology in disease and untapped fields”, featured talks linking tRNAs, self-replicating RNAs, onco-mRNAs, mRNA decay and glyco-RNAs to human disease.
The final scientific talk of the conference was a fantastic plenary presentation by Dr. Lynne Maquat, in which she discussed how NCBP3 is linked to preventing the premature decay of intron-containing pre-mRNAs to activate mitochondrial function.
The conference ended with a wonderful final panel discussion featuring Drs. Adrian Krainer (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory); Cindy Bell (Chair, Diabetes Action Canada & Former Executive Vice President, Genome Canada); Andre Picard (Journalist & Author, Globe & Mail); Phillip Sharp (Nobel Laureate, MIT) and John Mattick (UNSW, Sydney).
The RNA Canada ARN design contest silent auction also concluded at the end of the conference! Congratulations to Dr. Howard Lipshitz, who took home the prize.
It was a fantastic conference and RNA Canada ARN was so thrilled to welcome the world to Ottawa. We hope everyone had a safe trip back home, and we are so excited to build on this conference in order to augment RNA research in Canada for our scientists, our trainees and the people of Canada.