Letter from the Editors

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ear readers, We are delighted to bring you the eighth issue of Acta Naturae - the first issue of 2011. As you can see, despite the numerous skeptical assessments that greeted the very beginning of our activity, the journal continues to be published, and, moreover, it is carving out a place for itself under the sun in Russia and abroad. The support that is anticipated to come in the nearest future from the Ministry of Education and Science is of crucial importance at this stage. As usual, this eighth issue opens with review articles devoted to the major issues of life science. The reviews by E.S. Severin and M.V. Savvateeva consider the problems of the functioning of membrane receptor systems, which are crucial in the interaction between a cell and its environment. The design of next-generation drugs is closely connected to the investigation of these systems. The review by T.A. Zdobnova et al. deals with the quite urgent problem of tumor diagnostics using quantum dots. unquestionable success has been achieved in this field; however, a number of problems that raise obstacles in successful application of this method have remained unsolved. the review by D.A. Skvortsov et al. contains data on the determination of telomerase activity, which is in many cases a major criterion in assessing malignant cell transformation. The experimental articles deal with different branches of biology. the range of articles is rather broad: medical genetics, cell biology, molecular physiology, and the physicochemistry of proteins. However, the vast majority of these publications are connected to medicine. We believe that the tendency towards “medicinization” represents development in our science. In the section Forum, the discussion of topical questions of both scientific and science-organizational nature is continued. the report by E.B. Prokhorchuk deals with the results of the 4th Annual conference of Participants in the International cancer Genome consortium, which was held in Australia in December 2010. Work in this direction has been active; it remains to deplore that Russia is not a rightful participant in the consortium. Vice-chancellor of Moscow State university, Academician A.R. Khokhlov, speculates on the eternal problem of Russian science -the timely and rational renewal of scientific equipment. Finally, the article by I. Sterlingov devoted to the place and role of bibliometry, which is believed to objectively and reasonably assess the current state of things, should be rather interesting to our readers. We would like to seize this opportunity to invite interested authors to send their articles to our journal.