Vol 6, No 1 (2008)

The paper covers the now population and genetic changes in forest forming species. An estimate is made of the effects exerted on genetic resources of the species by both natural environmental (global environmental changes) and human-made (environmental contamination, deforestation and fragmentation of woodlands, forest exploitation and reforestation, forest tree breeding, introduction) factors.

Development of stress-resistant plant varieties is a main task of plant biotechnology which is gaining popularity nowadays following the climatic changes and increased environmental pollution. This task implementation is primarily depends on identification of new genes responsible for stress resistance and also on the analysis of all functional features of genes on a cellular, tissue and organ levels. This article is dedicated to the study of Arabidopsis thaliana mutant nfz24 and the analysis of theNFZ24 gene function in cold stress response. It was demonstrated that reduced carotinoid content and alteration in ABA dependent cold response are the reasons of nfz24 cold sensitivity.

We performed comparative genetic analysis of a set of synthetic peptides effects on longevity and free-radical oxidation in Drosophila melanogaster. Strong genotype and gene-environmental interaction in determining traits value were evaluated. Mechanisms of vilon and epithalon effect on free oxygen species in mitochondria seemed to be different.