Director of the Genetic Resources Institute of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS), corresponding member of ANAS Zeynal Akparov has received a Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine R.J. Roberts invited to Baku to participate at the 5th Baku International Humanitarian Forum.
During the meeting Z.Akparov provided an insight into the history of the institute, carried out scientific research work and achievements obtained by the Institute scientists in most modern directions of science. He told about national legislation developed during last time in the sphere of genetic resources in Azerbaijan, new system of management and state support to this system.
The guest scientists expressed contentment from the national gene bank of the institute, departments and laboratories, especially department of Biotechnology, conditions in it, modern scientific equipment, and potential of young and talented personnel and familiarization with the level of researches held.
R.J.Roberts carried out a scientific seminar on “Microbial Methylomes” in the assembly hall of the institute followed by question and answer session.
It must be mentioned that a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)Richard John Roberts was born in 1943. He is molecular biologist and biochemist. Jointly with Phillip Allen Sharp they discovered in 1993 the mechanism of introns and splicing in eukaryote DNA. He worked in University of Sheffield, New England Biolabs, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Harvard University. Presently he works as a Senior Scientific Researcher in New England Biolabs.
In 1972 he started work on restriction enzymes of the second type and several years later he discovered more than 100 restriction ferments. At the same time he made a sequence of Adenovirus-2 genome (consisting of 35,937 nucleotides). He carried out various projects implemented on reading the sequence of genome’s nucleotide. The application of computer methods used by him in this sphere expanded.
Hence, headed by him laboratory have played a pioneer role in reading the sequence of genome nucleotide based on application of computer technologies and focused on a number of great researches in the direction of analysis based on computer methods of RNA and proteins sequence.
Presently he is one of the leaders of the COMBREX project connected with functional annotation of the prokaryote genome.
They discussed possibilities of joint scientific cooperation and decided to establish scientific relations during the meeting.