Recent Research
Extreme anti-oxidant protection against ionizing radiation in bdelloid rotifers
We conclude that the great radioresistance of bdelloid rotifers is a consequence of an unusually effective system of anti-oxidant protection of cellular constituents, including those required for DSB repair, allowing bdelloids to recover and continue reproducing after doses of IR causing hundreds of DSBs per nucleus. Bdelloid rotifers therefore offer an advantageous system for investigation of enhanced anti-oxidant protection and its consequences in animal systems.
Stoichiometry of MutS and MutL at unrepaired mismatches in vivo suggests a mechanism of repair. Elez M, Radman M, Matic I. Source
Our results corroborate the hypothesis postulating that MutL accumulation assures the coordination of the MMR activities between the mismatch and the strand discrimination site.
Three Major Research Projects
This three tier project offers, at itsR & D stage,original science-based solutions to three major problems of humanity: healthy longevity, local food supplyand local energy supply. Mission and purpose of the first two projects is to profoundly change the public health by combining an original molecular diagnostics with a new treatment employing natural compounds, ofnutriceutical kind, that is both preventive and therapeutic.
Biology of robustness
Life’s robustness depends on the resilience of fertile organisms (the soma) that assure the long-term evolutionary success of the germ-line, i.e., species. In the framework of this project we explore the chemistry of two types of biological clocks: the species-specific somatic clock (robustness of the proteome and life span) and the universal germ-line clock (mutations and evolution). As model organisms, we explore the bacterium D. radiodurans and aquatic animals bdelloid rotifers as well as complex animals like tardigrades, all equally resistant to long-term desiccation and extreme doses of ionizing radiation.
MedILS
The Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences (MedILS) was conceived about 30 years ago by its founders Professors Miroslav Radman and Marija Alacevic as an international 'renaissance' project inspired by the scientific culture of the most productive private institutes, such as the Rockefeller and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory MedILS is an independent private, but non-profit international institution set up as a courageous scientific and societal experiment.
