Olga Dontsova

Biography

A graduate of the Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU), Olga Dontsova, Doctor of Sciences in Bioorganic Chemistry,  has built a successful scientific career at her alma mater, where she continues to hold a position of  Professor of Bioorganic Chemistry, Head of Department of Chemistry of Natural Compounds, Head of Laboratory of Nucleoprotein Compounds and Head of RNA Structure and Function Department of the A.N. Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology. Dr Dontsova has developed many effective collaborations with leading European and US labs and established an exceptional international record in the field of RNA research. Over the years, she made significant contributions and discoveries in the field of molecular biology and authored more than 110 peer-reviewed publications in major scientific journals, such as Molecular Cell, BMC Genomics, Nucleic Acids Research, EMBO Journal, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Dr Dontsova is a Corresponding Member of Russian Academy of Sciences, a member of a European non-governmental scientific association Academia Europaea, and an editorial board member of international journals Biochimie, Acta Naturae and Molecular Biology. Dr Dontsova is also a skilled and experienced educator. She teaches the core course on Molecular Biology at the MSU Department of Chemistry of Natural Compounds, and prepared several advanced courses for PhD students on the new achievements in life sciences.

Research Interest

Investigation of structure and function of RNA-containing cellular machines. Chemical crosslinking approach was developed to follow the dynamic contacts within RNA molecules that are formed in functioning ribosome that allowed in combination with various chemical techniques to trace the mRNA (23, 82, 98, 100, 101, 106, 108-113), as well as 5S rRNA contacts in translating ribosome (67, 69, 91, 93, 95, 102-104, 107).