XXII. BIOCHEMICKÝ ZJAZD - Jesseniova lekárska fakulta

Lectures
TWENTY fOUr YEars SINCE CHErNOBYL DISaSTEr:
What SEED prOTEIN can TELL US?
Martin Hajduch 1 , Katarína Klubicová 1 , Maksym Danchenko 1, 3 , Ludovit Škultéty 2 ,
Namik Rashydov 3 and Anna Preťová 1
1
Department of Reproduction and Developmental Biology, Institute of Plant Genetics
and Biotechnology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Nitra, Slovakia
2
Center for Molecular Medicine, BITCET, Institute of Virology, Slovak Academy
of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia, 3 Department of Biophysics and Radiobiology,
Institute of Cell Biology and Genetic Engineering, National Academy of Sciences
of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
The explosion of one of the four reactors of Chernobyl nuclear power plant (CNPP) on
26 April 1986 caused the worst environmental nuclear disaster in the history. Huge
amounts of radioactivity were released not only to the close surroundings of the power
plant but also to large parts of Europe. Despite the fact that since 1986 radiation levels
in the affected environment have declined several hundred folds, dangerous long-living
isotopes such as 137 Cs and 90 Sr remains as main contaminants. Now, 24 years after the
accident, the question how plants in radio-contaminated Chernobyl were able to adapt
is still open, and needs to be fully answered. Plants are stationary and thus must adapt
to extreme conditions in order to survive. The main objective of our research is to
characterize quantitative differences on protein levels between soybean (Glycine max)
and flax (Linum usitatissimum) grown in contaminated (~5 km from CNPP) and control
(~10 km from CNPP) experimental fields in order to elucidate molecular mechanisms
plants used for adaptation. To acquire complex proteome information seed proteins
are quantitatively analyzed using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and identified by
tandem mass spectrometry.
58 XXII. Biochemistry Congress, Martin