IPCB-MSU Moscow, RU

Role and Contribution

The GeneBee bioinformatics group was founded 15 years ago with a mission to create a computer-based environment for solving diverse biological problems by mathematical methods. It currently includes 8 people mostly with strong background in different fields of mathematics and computer science. The GeneBee serves the biological research community locally at the MSU and in Russia as the whole, supervising the national node of the EMBnet. The group employs advanced equipment for teaching and research activities, and for running a dedicated web-server (www.genebee.msu.ru). Through this server researchers have access to popular bioinformatics resources developed by others as well as to programs that are based on original algorithms developed by GeneBee scientists. Since its launch in 1995, this site has served users from more than 100 countries. The GeneBee group is a major Partner on the MSU-wide Interfaculty Project on Bioinformatics and collaborates with the Virus Bioinformatics group of Leiden University Medical Center, and it contributed to the Russian part of the HUGO international project. Its work on bioinformatics has been supported by grants from the Russian Fund for the Fundamental Research during last 10 years, and from the Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research (LICR; Switzerland) most recently. The GeneBee group worked with Partners in the biotech industry including QBI, Israel. The people involved in the project are: A.M. Leontovich, the GeneBee Principal Investigator and Senior Scientist in the Department of Mathematical Methods in Biology. He is an expert in applications of the probabilistic theory to biological problems, which, among others, are covered in 51 articles published in refereed journals. V.K. Nikolaev is Senior Scientist, an expert in the information theory and in charge of the bioinformatics software development and administration. D.V. Samborsky, Junior Scientist with 9 years of extensive experience in programming on different languages and platforms.