Letter from the Editors

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We would like to bring you this seventh volume of our journal. As usual, the volume begins with review articles on promising aspects of life sciences. A review by V.A. Stepanov focuses on predicting one’s susceptibility to various diseases based on knowledge of one’s genome structure and ethnicity. Studies in this direction will establish a basis for personalized medicine, which is set to become a major component of the healthcare system in a decade. A review by A.P. Sokolenko addresses the situation around breast and ovary cancer in Russia, emphasizing the role of hereditary factors. This appears to be a major problem, since a considerable level of mortality is associated with these two types of cancers in women. Two review articles are dedicated to the molecular genetics of eukaryotes. These include an article by E.V. Dementyeva and S.M. Zakiyan on the dose-dependent compensation of genes in sex chromosomes and a review by E.P. Galimov dedicated to oxidative stress and apoptosis. As always, the experimental articles in this volume cover a wide range of topics in both fundamental physico-chemical biology (M.V. Zagoskin et al., R.V. Reshetnikov et al., K.V. Tchernorizov and V.K. Ævedas) and biomedicine (A. N. Glushkov et al., A.V. Maksimenko et al., L.E. Salnikova et al.). In our opinion, a particularly interesting article is S.S. Shishkin’s Proteomics of Prostate Cancer Database, which is a description of an open database created by the authors. This database will be useful to a broad audience, including specialists in proteomics and cell biology, as well as practicing oncologists. In the present volume, the Forum section is dedicated to the development of national technological platforms, whose launch was announced recently by the Ministry of Science and Education of the Russian Federation. The ideology here is that these platforms would bring together scientists, representatives of the business community, and the state in order to foster a coordinated innovative development in key economic areas. An article by I. Sterligov sums up the experience of the EU, where similar platforms have already been created and are now substantially contributing to technological progress. An article by M. Muravieva contains elaborate comments on the Russian Federation government’s initiative and sheds light on how the platforms work. The article offers useful guidelines for the reader to find his niche within the structure of the platform. Particular examples of the integration of the efforts of science, business, and the state can be found in the article by E. Novoselova. This article describes the formation of so-called “pharmaceutical clusters,” which were discussed at the International Forum “Innovative Drug Research and Development in Russia” (Moscow, November 17-18). We are pleased to inform our contributors and readers that our journal has now evolved into its fully fledged form. We have finally succeeded in signing a contract with PubMed. The database is currently being replenished, and hopefully, our articles will soon be trackable online. The primary goal now is increasing the scientific quality of the published articles in order to increase impact in the future. This is not an easy task, but we hope that, together, we will succeed.