Head of the Department
Elena N. ILINA
PhD, Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences
The Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics includes
the following laboratories:
History of the Department
The Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics (headed by V.M. Govorun, Prof., Doctor of Biological Sciences) evolved at the beginning of 1990s from the Laboratory of Biochemistry of Cell Cultures. The Department’s research activity is focused on the development of a universal platform for high-density genome mapping and determining the transcriptional, proteomic and metabolic activities of the genome, and on the development of unified experiment/calculation formats to investigate prokaryotic organisms for medical use, biotechnology industry, the development of knowledge and search for new drugs. Our research scientific projects in the field of post-genomic biology and medicine imply not only the use of data on the complete DNA sequence, but also the investigation of genome persistence, genome micro- and macro-heterogeneity as well as the cause-and-effect relationships that result from DNA instability at the level of mRNA and proteins. A key prerequisite for carrying out a project on systems biology is the development of the so-called technological platform that allows conducting investigation simultaneously at four levels of cell organization: to determine the parameters of genome stability (complete genome scanning), to determine the degree of gene transcription (transcriptional profile), to measure the expression of proteins and their post-translational modification (proteomic profile) and to detect metabolic streams. A great amount of information resulting from experimental studies requires the development of the unified format of storage and export of data for their subsequent mathematical analysis and the building of models.