ABSTRACT
Acknowledgements Sebastien Porcher is grateful to EPFL and to the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant
Nr. 2000-06890) for theirs generous support during my Ph.D. S.P. is grateful to Pr. Arseniyadis for its wisdom, advice and always fruitful discussions and would also like to thank Pr. Pitsch, his director o f thesis, for introducing him to the RNA world and his colleagues o f the LCAN laboratory: Dr. Cyrille Denarii, Dr. Frdd&ic Meylan, Dr. Muthuppalaniappan Meyyappan, Dr. Luc Reymond and Dr. Philipp Wenter. The authors would like to thank Henri Grosjean for his continuous encouragement, support and kindness that permitted the elaboration o f this chapter and Richard Gieg£ for his impulse to study with growing interest the fascinating field o f chemical biology. M.H. acknowledges funding by the DFG (HE 3397/4).
