George A. Calin

Genetic chaos and antichaos in human cancers.

Cancer is considered the genetic disease with the most complex pathogenetic mechanism. Contrary to normal human tissues, which function in a highly ordered and uniform manner, tumor tissues were considered to develop chaos. Here we propose that analysis of human neoplasia according to the concepts of chaos and antichaos allowed to distinguish two main types of cancers: the hematopoietic cancers, characterized by the orderly antichaos and solid cancers governed by a disordered complex of genetic and molecular events characteristic of a chaotic pattern. Genetic chaos and antichaos have generated rules that can be applied to the diagnosis and therapy of human tumors.

Key principles of miRNA involvement in human diseases

Although rapid progress in our understanding of the functions of miRNA has been made by experimentation and computational approach, a considerable effort still has to be done in determining the general principles that govern the miRNA’s mode of action in human diseases. We will further discuss how these principles are being progressively approached by molecular studies, as well as the importance of miRNA in regulating different target genes and functions in specific biological contexts. There is a great demand to understand the principles of context-specific miRNA target recognition in order to design future experiments and models of normal developmental and disease states.