ARKHANGELSK, February 16. /TASS/. Participants in the Winter School of the Floating University in Arkhangelsk studied microorganisms of the Arctic seas, will tests their DNAs and enzymes that may be used industrially. The Winter School featured more than 20 students and post-graduates from Vladivostok, Irkutsk, Yekaterinburg, Kaliningrad, Ryazan, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Arkhangelsk, TASS correspondent reported.
The University and the national hydrometeorology service's Northern branch, Sevhydromet, continue the Arctic Floating University project since 2012.
"The school participants isolated DNA from microbial Arctic communities that we'd selected - they were in a frozen state - and analyzes the activity of certain enzymes that are important from the point of view of industries. Microorganisms that are in extreme conditions, at low temperatures, high salinity, and so on, may be interesting in terms of using them," said Andrey Aksenov, Professor at the university's Department of Biology, Ecology and Biotechnology.
Projects by school students
Each school participant is already engaged in scientific research. Nikita Goncharov, a junior researcher at the Pasteur Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology (St. Petersburg), studies microorganisms' mechanisms of adaptation to stress. He has worked in Antarctica, in Yakutia, at excavations of an ancient burial mound in Tuva. He compares how bacteria adapt to difficult conditions in nature with how bacteria adapt to effects from antibiotics, disinfectants at hospitals.
By studying Arctic microorganisms, specialists will understand better how to deal with chronic infections. In case of a disease, an antibiotic affects a significant part of the bacteria, and the person recovers, but some of the microbes fall into an inactive state. No drugs can affect them, and after a while an exacerbation occurs. "When we manage to understand the process's physiology, then the effect on the balance between dividing cells and their transition into a physiologically inactive state may be used in biotechnology, bioreactors, up to food microbiology, in dairy products or brewing, where it is necessary either to have processes accelerated or slowed down," the researcher said.
Ksenia Mayorova, the university's student, studies Arctic algae - they are used to produce various useful substances for medicine, the food industry and cosmetology. After the extraction, there remain polysaccharides, which can be used as a source of carbon in nutrient media for microbes. The student plans to participate in the Arctic Floating University voyage to find bacteria that produce enzymes to process algae. "Nowadays we know enzymes that produce mold fungi. I hope to find microbes that produce more efficient enzymes," she explained.
The school ended on February 7. The university's professor, Andrey Aksenov, stressed the students could become candidates for participation in expeditions of the Arctic Floating University or of other floating universities.
Microbiotech in the Arctic track's partners are Fundamental Foundations of Biotechnology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Moscow State University, the Federal Research Center for Integrated Arctic Studies, the Floating University Coordination Center at MIPT, the Northern Maritime Museum, the Arkhangelsk Pulp and Paper Mill, and the Interregional Microbiological Society. The Helikon Company is the track's main sponsor and partner.