Five young Russian researchers got RF Presidential prizes in science and innovations for 2012 in February of 2013. Such prizes were instituted for budding talents. Yuri Medvedev of the Rossiiskaya gazeta newspaper elaborates. Dmitry Chudakov, Dr. Sc. (Biol.), head of the Laboratory of Adaptive Immunity Genomics in the RAS Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry named after Academicians She-myakin and Ovchinnikov is among world-known scientists in his field. His papers are published in prestige international periodicals including above 10 papers that appeared in journals of the Nature Publishing Group; his citation index is 2,300 and his Hirsch index*, 23. Chudakov's interests concern fluorescent proteins. Thus, shown on television more than once were animals with built-in genes of such proteins (kittens, chickens, pigs and mice) who became green, yellow or red upon exposure to blue light. In 2008 USA biochemists Osamu Shimomura and Roger Tsien, and also neuroscientist Martin Chalfie were awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery and studies of fluorescent proteins. Scores of them have been created, and it is impossible to conceive modern molecular cell biology without them. Such proteins * Hirsch index is a scientometric indicator suggested in 2005 by an American physicist, Jorse Hirsch. It denotes a cumulative number of references to a scientist's works. Used alongside the citation index.-Ed. are used in pharmacology, in biomedical research, preclinical drug tests, neurobiology, immunology, oncology, and in other areas. These proteins help tracing tumor growth or observing how fish thinks. Chudakov noted: "In leading countries hundreds of laboratories are working to create different fluorescent proteins and instruments based on them; this is true also of research carried out by Nobel prizewinner Roger Tsien. Competition is tough. And yet, in some areas we have managed to get ahead of our main competitors in the USA a ... Читать далее