Twenty years of RNA crystallography

I still remember vividly a phone call in the spring of 1995. I was then modeling an RNA structure in the darkened room where the Evans & Sutherland PS300 was buzzing loudly. Tom Cech was on the line and, after the usual greetings, he asked with his usual jovial and direct way, "Eric, we want to start a new journal dedicated to RNA; are you willing to become a journal editor?" I was stunned and speechless. My knowledge of RNA biology was scanty. I knew quite well all the twenty or so RNA structures that existed back then, as I had used their structural information to build RNA models in three dimensions, such as the one I was building when Tom called, or that of the core of group I introns I had built with Francois Michel a few years earlier.