Developmental gene regulation and genetic syndromes : mechanisms, constraints and atavisms

This year's lecture will focus on the increasingly close relationship between gene regulation during early development and the existence of numerous genetic syndromes in humans. Indeed, recent advances in the study of the regulation of genes important to our development have led to an understanding of the molecular etiology of many of the syndromes affecting our species, so that these regulatory defects are now becoming almost as important in the emergence of these pathological states as structural defects in the genes themselves. What are the underlying mechanisms? What forms are permitted by our genetics? Are these syndromes atavisms, reminders of our evolutionary past? And are there any therapeutic options, even if only hypotheses? These are just some of the questions that will be addressed in this lecture, which will review some of the genetic syndromes affecting limb development and their genomic origins, while attempting to draw some general conclusions concerning our development strategy.