Laboratory of biomolecular modeling at Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry (IBCh) for several years has been developing computational technique for theoretical assessment of dimerization modes for transmembrane (TM) domains of receptor tyrosine kinases. This dimerization represents an important molecular event in cell growth and differentiation. A (rather) simple prediction tool for possible configuration of TM-dimers is now available as a PREDDIMER web service: http://model.nmr.ru/preddimer.

Phenotypic traits of an organism are determined by the combination of protein coding sequences along with their regulatory elements, which generate tissue-specific expression profiles. In the recent research performed by two IBCh research groups, in collaboration with other Moscow institutes, it was described the impact of the human-specific endogenous retroviral insertion on regulation of expression of the gene important for proper CNS functioning. It was hypothesized that such interaction may have played a role in the human evolution by up-regulating the expression of this gene.

Fluorescently labeled ceramide-1-phosphate synthesized in the Laboratory of lipid chemistry (IBCh RAS) permitted determination of a novel lipid transfer protein specificity.