Press releases

Alexander Kilchevsky said that scientists have tested more than 500 athletes from 30 national teams of Belarus.

The DNA samples are stored in the human genetics laboratory at the Institute of Genetics and Cytology of the National Academy of Sciences. The DNA bank includes 20 major genes with the biggest impact on the locomotor system, stamina, speed, strength, hypoxia adaptive response, resilience level.

Special programs have been developed to select beginning athletes in different sports. A new system of genetic testing in sport includes genes, sports achievements and disposition to occupational pathology. The genetic testing of athletes help optimize the training process and improve their biomedical support.

A DNA technology has been developed to determine the level of activity of genes that are associated with high sports achievements.

The third international scientific conference the 21st Century Genetics and Biotechnology: Problems, Achievements, Prospects is running at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus on 23-25 November. Scientists from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the United Kingdom (Scotland) will share their most recent achievements in genetics and biotechnology. All in all, the forum has brought together over 200 researchers. The event is aimed at the exchange of experience and the unification of scientific potentials of scientists from different countries for addressing top priority tasks in genetics and selection. The Eleventh Congress of the Belarusian Society of Geneticists and Breeders will be held as part of the conference in Minsk.

The congress and the conference will mark the 115th anniversary of the birth of Academician Anton Zhebrak, a pioneer of genetics research in Belarus. The scientist’s research in distant hybridization of wheat and experimental polyploidy, which was started in Moscow in the 1930s and continued in the Academy of Sciences of the Belarusian SSR in the 1950s, was the first genetics research in the country.