In memoriam: Paolo Sassone‐Corsi (2020)

It is with profound sadness that we announce that Professor Paolo Sassone-Corsi passed away on July 23rd. His death is a huge loss to the fields of genetics, epigenetics, and reproductive biology, but even more so to those who lost a mentor, trusted colleague, collaborator, and friend to many scientists. Paolo was born in Naples (Italy) in 1956 and graduated in biological sciences at the University of Federico II, Naples. His scientific career in the field of molecular biology started in the 1980s in Strasbourg (France), where his mentor was Pierre Chambon. He moved as a post-doc to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (San Diego, CA), where he worked in the group of Dr Verma. He then returned to Strasbourg as a research group leader of the Centre National de la Recherche (CNR). It was shortly after his return to Europe in 1992 that he discovered the function of CREM in spermatogenesis. This discovery, published in Nature,1 was a major breakthrough in the field and was followed by a number of fundamental papers that substantially contributed to the understanding of the regulation of spermatogenesis.2, 3 Paolo was a founding member of the “International Symposium on the Genetics of Male Infertility”, a major recurrent scientific event in "androgenetics", which was held in Florence (Italy) and in Salt Lake City (USA) between 2003 and 2013. This period coincides with a focus of Paolo’s diverse research foci on the field of reproductive biology and resulted in memorable plenary lectures on many occasions. He was an invited speaker at various editions of ECA, ASA, and ICA congresses. One of Paolo’s greatest skills was his ability to explain with simple words highly complex biological processes in his lectures. When he talked about science he acted as a storyteller, and his talks were full of suspense. He shared with us all those exciting feelings, which accompanies the discovery of a completely unexpected biological mechanism or the mystery of a novel protein. In 2006, Paolo moved to the University of California, Irvine where he established the Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism, mainly focusing on understanding the biological clock and epigenetic changes during aging. He discovered the specific role of transcriptional and epigenetic regulators in the function of the circadian clock and deciphered the intimate connection between metabolic circuits and circadian system.4-7 More recently, he revealed how nutritional challenges reprogram circadian homeostasis and described previously unanticipated circadian control pathways that relate to nutrition, cancer, and aging.8, 9 What have we learned from Paolo’s work? He used to say that he became a biologist because he wanted to understand basic cellular mechanisms and physiology. His discoveries were published in top journals such as Cell, Science, Nature and are among the best examples of rigorous basic research with a potential impact on clinical research. Paolo’s basic research work was highly appreciated by different fields such as neurobiology, endocrinology, and genetics/epigenetics. He received an impressive number of prestigious awards from many different organizations reflecting both the quality and versatility of his work. He was one of the youngest awardee ever receiving the Gold Medal of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 1994. Among his latest recognitions, in 2014, 20 years later, he became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, USA. The website of the Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism offers you some of his recent plenary lectures https://sassonecorsilaboratory.org/psc/ In our field, Paolo was a pioneer of epigenetics, and due to his outstanding work, we started to understand the unique chromatin remodelling and transcriptional regulation events associated with spermatogenesis.10-12. He also discovered, together with his Finnish colleagues, the “mysterious” chromatoid body and most importantly shed light on its function during spermatogenesis.13-15 Importantly, he was also a great teacher and very collaborative, and many of his fellows are now research group leaders all over the world. Although his last paper in our field dates back to 2014, his former PhD students and post-doc are now further developing Paolo’s intuitions and ideas in their labs. Although we all know Paolo as an excellent molecular geneticist, only few of us are aware about the fact that he was also an expert in astronomy. He had an ancestral passion for this field beginning in his childhood and together with his brother, Emilio, discovered a new star, Nova Cygni 75, which was then further analyzed by Italian astrophysics. In 1977, he received his first award, the Philips European Award for Young Investigators for his research related to Saturn. Thanks to a stage at the Paris-Meudon observatory in 1978, the two brothers carried out important research on the seasonal variations of Saturn’s bands. This work was published in Astronomical Journal. Astronomy remained in his heart forever and he continued to observe the sky with Emilio. In a book, written together with an Italian writer, Erri De Luca, he made a beautiful definition on human beings as part of the universe, the universe he loved to observe, stating, “We are biological machines that work in synergy and coherence with the planet, and with all that Earth is”. Above all, Paolo was a beautiful person, and a friend of many of us. It was a pleasure to sit with him at the congress dinners and listen to his stories. It was easy to talk with him about literature, art, music and even about football. In fact, he regularly played football together with his young fellows and collaborators and he was a rather talented midfielder (plenty of ideas and directing the game). Paolo was a typical Mediterranean, sunny person, full of energy, and enthusiasm. He transmitted serenity and an eternal love for science. His favorite topic was epigenetics and he used to define it as “an orchestra, a different one in each cell type, which plays the 3 billion nucleotides as they were musical notes of a Beethoven symphony”. Paolo opened our eyes about “genomic plasticity”, the fact that our DNA is not the only necessary thing to define our destiny, that the environment may shape us, and that “the memory of all the events and experiences we go through every day accumulate to turn our DNA into a mold that takes different forms, from individual to individual”. As he says: " we are therefore the product of what is written in DNA (let's call it the philosophical innate) and how the notes are read (acquired) to develop the symphony of life”. We will miss him as scientist and as a friend, but his memory will remain alive in and through all those who read his articles and met him personally.