Dr Omelyanchuk is the author of Evolution and Origin of HRS, a Protein Interacting with Merlin, the Neurofibromatosis 2 Gene Product which was recently published in Gene Regulation and Systems Biology.

The Editor in Chief of Gene Regulation and Systems Biology recently issued a call for papers.

Please describe your experience with Libertas Academica:

Science is an interesting thing. I feel that LA consider novelity and originality of research as very essential criterions.

What is the primary focus of your research?

Cellular function of Tumor-suppresor proteins.

What are the most exciting developments arising from current research in your area?

We see that in addition to the proliferation regulation in somatic tissue, those proteins also have an additional functions in a germ-line.

Who are your main collaborators? Please describe your work with them.

We had a joint Merlin tumor-suppressor project W81XWH-04-1-0509 with Dr. Long-Sheng Chang supported by US Army Medical Research Foundation. My group in Novosibirsk was working with drosophila Merlin, while Long-Sheng laboratory with mouse and human NF2.
In the past we were also working with S.Nokkala and J. Mattila from Turku University (Finland).

How did you come to be working in your research area?

I had made PhD (1987) in Molecular Evolution. In particular I had found that antigenic determinants of influenza virus have more non-synonimous that synonimous amino acid changes. Now days this effect is called as "positive selection". After that I started to work in radiation genetics on drosophila object. During this time Russian Science start to transit to grant system and I could not find a room for radiobiological study and moved to the cell-cycle. Ater a few years in the Cell-Cycle field it become evident (From A.Garcia-Bellido, P. Bryant and B.Edgar papers) that the most interesting task is how Cell-cycle is regulated in tissues.

What do you think about the development of open access publishing? What motivated you to do so?

Advanced and perspective.

What articles and/or books have you published recently?

A GFP trap study uncovers the functions of Gilgamesh protein kinase in Drosophila melanogaster spermatogenesis. Nerusheva OO, Dorogova NV, Gubanova NV, Yudina OS, Omelyanchuk LV. Cell Biol. Int. 2009, 33(5):586-93.

Leonid V. Omelyanchuk, Julya A. Pertseva and John M. Saul Evolutionary Origin of the Tumor Suppressor Hyperplastic Discs Protein. In Silico Biology 9 (2009) 1–5.

Lemos CL, Sampaio P, Maiato H, Costa M, Omel'yanchuk LV, Liberal V, Sunkel CE.
Mast, a conserved microtubule-associated protein required for bipolar mitotic spindle organization EMBO JOURNAL 2000,19 (14): 3668-3682.

Mattila J, Omelyanchuk L, Kyttala S, Turunen H, Nokkala S. Role of Jun N-terminal Kinase (JNK) signaling in the wound healing and regeneration of a Drosophila melanogaster wing imaginal disc Int J Dev Biol. 2005;49(4):391-9.

Golovnina K, Blinov A, Akhmametyeva EM, Omelyanchuk LV, Chang LS. Evolution and origin of merlin, the product of the Neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2) tumor-suppressor gene BMC Evol Biol. 2005;5:69.

Dorogova NV, Akhmametyeva EM, Kopyl SA, Gubanova NV, Yudina OS, Omelyanchuk LV, Chang LS. The role of Drosophila Merlin in spermatogenesis. BMC Cell Biol. 2008;9(1):1.