The history of molecular genetics in Russia: history of science analysis

The paper is devoted to the history of nascence and development of molecular genetics in Russia. In the West, this discipline emerged in the 1950s when the structure of the DNA molecule was first described and then the genetic code written in DNA was deciphered. In the USSR, under the domination of Lysenkoism, this research area had been banned for a long time. The first Russian works in the field of molecular genetics started to appear in the 1960s. The Institute of Radiological and Physico-Chemical biology, created in 1958 and renamed Institute of Molecular Biology in 1965, became the country’s biggest center for the studies on genetic structure and processes at the molecular level. While the scope of molecular genetics research broadened significantly in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s, later on these studies began to fade away due to the shrinking of funding of soviet science. Internationally, there was such a dramatic growth of molecular genetics at the turn of the 21 century that it could be compared to a genetic revolution. Beginning with the 1990s, fundamentally new methods of DNA research began to be practiced and, year after year, the world was stunned by yet another amazing discovery in the field of molecular genetics that upended the established scientific notions of hereditary nature of living organisms. Modern methods of molecular genetics are based on the use of various computer technologies.