A study by an international team of scientists led by researchers from the Shemyakin–Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IBCh RAS) has been published in Nature Plants. The study presents and validates a simple and elegant approach to making autonomous bioluminescent reporters resistant to metabolic fluctuations. The researchers developed pairs of luciferases that use the same substrate but emit light of different colors and demonstrated that the ratio between the two signals reflects reporter gene activity rather than the metabolic state of the cell. This approach enables long- term monitoring of plant hormone signaling and defense responses.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, determines the severity of infection not only through virulent proteins but also through small regulatory RNAs. Researchers from the Shemyakin–Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, together with colleagues from the Bach Institute of Biochemistry of the Research Center of Biotechnology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Central Tuberculosis Research Institute, studied two such molecules, MTS0997 and MTS1338, and showed that they simultaneously affect pathogen properties and shape the host immune response.

A photograph of the bioluminescent fungus Neonothopanus nambi, featured in a paper by researchers from the Department of Biomolecular Chemistry, was selected for the cover of the October issue of The FEBS Journal (Volume 293, Issue 20, 2026). The paper also ranked among the top five most-read articles published in The FEBS Journal over the past six months.