A tribute to Ladislas Robert

This Thematic Minireview Series of Matrix Biology focused on elastin, from structure to disease celebrates the memory of Ladislas Robert, a pioneer in Matrix Biology in France and Europe. Since his first publication on elastin and elastases in 1957, the huge development in matrix biology led to major findings on elastic fibers and their component proteins including elastin architecture, the role of fibrillins and microfibril-binding proteins on elastin assembly, the effects of sequence variants of human tropoelastin on its assembly, structure and functions, the role of elastin peptides in health and diseases, the identification of neuraminidase-1 as a member of the elastin receptor complex, and the fate of elastic fibers upon aging, which are reviewed in this series. Two other reviews, focused on the design and use of elastin-like recombinamers as biomaterials, and on the circadian rhythms in skin and other elastic tissues, complete this series.