My name is Ivan Minkov. I am a professor of Molecular Biology, Department of Molecular Biology, University of Plovdiv.
The areas we are working on are several – miRNA, plant viroids, DNA markers, plant biotech etc.
One subject we are most interested is the Bioinformatics, where I have a small but a capable group.
The specific reason I write to you concerns one of the topics we work on – miRNA and gene regulation. As it is known now, the microRNAs (miRNAs) are one of the most abundant groups of regulatory molecules in multicellular organisms, playing important roles in many fundamental cellular processes. More than four hundred miRNAs have been identified in humans and the deregulation of miRNA expression has been also shown in many cancers. Despite the postulated involvement of miRNAs
in tumourigenesis, there are only a few examples where an oncogene or a tumour suppressor has been
identified as a miRNA target.
Our group has experience in in silico analysis of potential miRNA- oncogene interactions. Moreover, we have tested the validity of several possible interactions of miRNAs with genes related to cancer.
We are using both bioinformatic and experimental approaches for the prediction and validation of possible targets for miRNAs.
Our research has given a genome-wide view of putative targets for different oncomirs, validation
of which would be of special medical interest.
So far, we have experimental verification of several genes which are involved in cancerogenesis
that are regulated by microRNAs. Our investigation includes validation of new and also already known
genes, which come from our bioinformatics software.
Furthermore our interests include bioinformatics of retrotransposons, small RNAs, RNAi, siRNAs,
and detailed analysis of genes related to disease and cancer genesis, which investigation can facilitate
subsequent medical research in human health.
We are specifically looking for a European Union Framework Program 7 (FP7) consortium to
join on the Working program topic:
HEALTH-2007-2.4.1-1: Translating the knowledge on non-coding RNAs linked to the aetiology of cancer into
novel diagnosis and therapy strategies.
I would be grateful if you can send information about this. Any other possibility for collaboration would be also welcome. So far we had a very successfully participated in the FP6 with 7 projects
and we hope that we would find our partners for the new topic for the FP7 as well.
We have had very good and successful collaboration with Prof. Martin Tabler (god bless his
soul) and several of my PhD students had been trained in his lab.
References
Rusinov V* Baev V*, Minkov IN, Tabler+ M. MicroInspector: a web tool for detection of miRNA binding sites in an RNA sequence. Nucleic Acids Res. 2005 Jul 1;33(Web Server issue):W696-700.
PMID: 15980566 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] *Joint first authors
Edyta Koscianska ,*, Vesselin Baev 1,2,*, Konstantinia Skreka, Katerina Oikonomaki, Ventsislav
Rusinov, Martin Tabler+ and Kriton Kalantidis. PREDICTION AND PRELIMINARY VALIDATION OF ONCOGENE REGULATION BY miRNAs. BMC Molbiol (submitted) *Joint first authors
Megraw M*, Baev V*, Rusinov V, Jensen ST, Kalantidis K, Hatzigeorgiou AG. MicroRNA promoter
element discovery in Arabidopsis. RNA. 2006 Sep;12(9):1612-9. Epub 2006 Aug 3. PMID:
16888323 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] *Joint first authors
Daskalova, E., V. Baev, V Rusinov, and Ivan Minkov. 3’UTR-located ALU Elements: Donors of potential miRNA target sites and mediators of network miRNA-based regulatory interactions, Evolutionary
Bioinformatics Online. 2, 99-116, 2006.