Nucleo-cytoplasmic actin relationships in Stockholm

The Wenner-Gren Foundations symposium "Actin and Actin-associated Proteins from Genes to Polysomes" took place at the Wenner-Gren Center in Stockholm, Sweden, on September 7-10, 2011. As the name of the symposium implied, the organizing committee, consisting of local organizers Piergiorgio Percipalle, Neus Visa and Ann Kristin Östlund Farrants from Stockholm and Thoru Pederson from Worcester, MA USA, had boldly decided to embrace the unconventional roles of actin, namely its connections to the gene expression apparatus all the way from the nuclear genes to the cytoplasmic protein synthesis machineries. The organizers assembled a respectable crowd of 25 speakers with very diverse backgrounds, but a common interest in understanding how actin and its associated factors may function outside their conventional roles in the cytoskeleton. As many people presented unpublished work, I will not go into detail of these talks but will rather aim to highlight the discussed topics and their possible implications to this exciting research field.