In the paper, the problem of isothermic DNA sequencing by hybridization, without any errors in its input data, is presented and an exact polynomial-time algorithm solving the problem is described. The correctness of the algorithm is con.rmed by an enumerative proof.

226 papers by Polish authors and co-authors have been collected. They deal with Antarctic or sub-Antarctic fishes and also their parasites. The majority (35.7%) of the publications discuss fish biology including growth, age, maturity, feeding and occurrence of particular species in the area. Fewer papers are devoted to parasitology (26.0%). Papers dealing with fish biomass and exploitation make up 18.5%. Papers dealing with morphology and systematics make up 6.6%. The remaining papers are devoted to technology, physiology, palaeontology and others.

DNA sequencing remains one of the most important problems in molecular and computational biology. One of the methods used for this purpose is sequencing by hybridization. In this approach usually DNA chips composed of a full library of oligonucleotides of a given length are used, but in principle it is possible to use another types of chips. Isothermic DNA chips, being one of them, when used for sequencing may reduce hybridization error rate. However, it was not clear if a number of errors following from subsequence repetitions is also reduced in this case. In this paper a method for estimating resolving power of isothermic DNA chips is described which allows for a comparison of such chips and the classical ones. The analysis of the resolving power shows that the probability of sequencing errors caused by subsequence repetitions is greater in the case of isothermic chips in comparison to their classical counterparts of a similar cardinality. This result suggests that isothermic chips should be chosen carefully since in some cases they may not give better results than the classical ones.

This article provides an initial analysis, from a historical standpoint, of the problematic nature of conceptualizations of the notion of gene in molecular genetics. The starting point is an historical outline of the relation between classical genetics and molecular genetics; it is indicated how the conceptual baggage of classical genetics influenced the development of the concepts of gene used later in molecular biology. I also reveal two problems of genes in the philosophy of science, i.e., skepticism concerning genes and the concept of nominal gene. I conclude that concept of gene functioning within the framework of molecular genetics should be considered from the point of view of experimentalism and pragmatism. It seems that the concept of gene on the molecular level should be conceptualized—in order to remain functional—as broadly as possible and in relation to genetic material.

Prof. Patrick Meire of the University of Antwerp discusses subtle interdependencies in marine ecosystems and the transformations that they undergo under the influence of climate change.

The article is a modified Polish version of my Director’s report published in the “Annual Report 2017–March 2018” of the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw (www.iimcb.gov.pl). After 20 years of being in charge of the Institute and a few months before the end of my final term as its director, I summarize our achievements, failures, lost opportunities and recall how it all began. I also give the names of people who formed organizing team of the Institute in the nineties, names of the first International Advisory Board members and names of the Institutes’ directors who will be in charge of it since July 2018.

In this paper we described three Art & Science projects organized by the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology (Polish Academy of Sciences), Marcel Nencki Foundation for the Support of Biological Sciences and the Art Department of the University of Rzeszów. First project, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Nencki Institute, was entitled “Biological imaging: inspiration by invisible world” and took place in Mikołajki in 2017. Next two projects were relating to “Art of Biodiversity” (Rzeszów, 2018) and “Power of Biological Structures” (Przeworsk, 2019). The aim of the projects was to introduce ideas of modern experimental biology to artist. All symposia/workshops were followed by few exhibitions at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Art Department of the University of Rzeszów, etc. Some of paintings originated during these projects established Nencki Art Collection, collection of modern art at Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology.

The Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, one of the largest nonacademic biological research centres in Poland, celebrates its 100th anniversary. The Institute was established in 1918 by the Scientific Society of Warsaw. In 1945, after World War II, it was re-established in Łódź and in 1952 incorporated into the newly founded Polish Academy of Sciences. During the period of 1953–1955 a newly erected building at 3 Pasteur Street in Warsaw became the home of the Nencki Institute. Today, the Nencki Institute strives for excellence in basic research in the broad sense of biological sciences. Neurosciences and biological and molecular basic of civilization diseases represent two main research areas of the Institute in the context of the society needs to improve the quality of life. One of the strategic activities of the Institute is investments in bio- imaging.This has recently resulted in inclusion of the Institute in the EUROBIOIMAGING project of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). An excellent example of a synergy of basic and innovative studies is the Neurobiology Centre established at the Nencki Institute in 2010–2013 as part of a strategic project entitled the CePT. Additionally, the Nencki Institute trains nearly 200 PhD students under various programmes, including the H2020.

In the investigated area, mass occurence of krill was observed in the vicinity of islands and the Antarctic Peninsula, in the waters above the shelf and shelfs slope. Small quantities of krill were found in the open oceanic waters. Immature individuals dominated close to the Antarctic Peninsula. Large, sexually mature kril dominated farther from the continent. Gravid females contributed little to the total populations. Krill of the largest size occured near the Palmer's Archipelago, and of the smallest size at the Antarctic Peninsula and the Elephant Island. It is likely that krill observed west and north of the Palmer Archipelago had been brought by currents from the Bellingshausen Sea. Krill in the Bransfield Strait originated probably from the mixing of populations carried by currents from the Weddell Sea and the Bellingshausen Sea.

In the investigated area krill occured in low abundance. It was recorded mainly above the shelf and above the continental slope close to the Palmer Archipelago and near the northern shores of Elephant Island. In the central part of the Bransfield Strait E. superba was caught in especially small quantities. In general krill of small size occurred, the size decreasing from the west to the east. Mature krill was dominan in the western part of the investigated area, whereas juveniles in the eastern part. Gravid females were caught very rarely.

Population studies on Arion lusitanicus, a slug species introduced into Poland, were carried out over the last decade. The slug occurs commonly in some areas and spreads out relatively quickly. It has an annual life cycle with eggs, and immature individuals overwinter. In the end of July A. lusitanicus begins copulation and three weeks later it lays eggs from which the first offspring hatch within a month. The copulation process and egg laying last until late fall. One A. lusitanicus can lay over 400 eggs. During the growing season there are two peaks of population density. This species feeds on plant material such as leaves, stems, bulbs, but also consumes animal material. The basic plant material are arable crops particularly vegetables and some species of agricultural crops, some fruit trees, ornamental plants, herbs and weeds. A. lusitanicus displays apparent food specialization and prefers certain cultivated and wild growing plants. A. lusitanicus shows large reproduction potential, wide food and ecologic tolerance, and is regarded as a serious pests occurring in home gardens.

Adam Łomnicki, a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and Academia Europaea, passed away on 15th December 2021. Adam Łomnicki was born in Warsaw, as a descendant of famous Łomnicki scholars - naturalists and mathematicians. He spent his childhood and youth in Sokołów Małopolski and Zakopane, where he completed his secondary school. In the years 1952–1957 he studied biology at the Jagiellonian University, where despite the domination of Soviet biology at the time, which denied the existence of scientific genetics and evolutionism, he had the opportunity to learn about these fields. His first job was at the Department of Nature Conservation of the Polish Academy of Sciences; he worked in the Tatra Mountains. Soon after graduating, Adam Łomnicki spent a few months at Oxford with one of the greatest ecologists of the time, Charles Elton. On his advice and under the supervision of prof. Roman Wojtusiak, he conducted his PhD thesis on the factors determining distribution of arachnids and coleopterans in the Tatra Mts. and graduated in 1961. His habilitation, completed in 1971, concerned the population ecology of Roman snails and led to very important conclusions on the effect of differences between individuals in population regulation (published in Nature). At that time, there was a crisis in environmental biology, caused by the contradictions between the principles of evolutionary theory and the existence of altruism and population regulation. An attempt to resolve these contradictions was Wynne Edwards' concept of group selection (1962), which, thanks, among others, to Łomnicki, turned out to be wrong. The concept of kin selection, put forward by W.D. Hamilton in 1964, of reciprocal altruism by Robert Trivers (1971) and models based on game theory by Maynard-Smith and Price (1973) resolved conflicts with behavioural biology, but it was Łomnicki's concept, based on mathematical models and supported by empirical studies showing the importance of individual variation in a population, that finally solved one of the most important problems of modern evolutionary biology and ecology – regulation of population numbers; Łomnicki's concept, presented in several publications, culminated in the book “Population ecology of Individuals” (Princeton University Press, 1988). Adam Łomnicki was not only a researcher, but also a master and teacher of a few generations of Polish evolutionary biologists and ecologists. With great enthusiasm he organized ecological seminars, national Schools of Mathematical Modeling in Biology (1975–1985), Evolutionary Biology Workshops (4 times a year in 1995–2012) later transformed into several-day international Polish Evolutionary Conferences. He was an excellent lecturer, and author or co-author of the most important Polish textbooks in the field of population ecology, evolutionary genetics and mathematical statistics for natural scientists. In 1981–1988 he was director of the Institute of Environmental Biology (now Institute of Environmental Sciences) of Jagiellonian University; during the dramatic change of political system in Poland, Łomnicki contributed to the modern organization of this institution and to the way of conducting university studies in modern Western style. Privately, he was very sociable, had a great sense of humor, was interested in history and skiing.

Water is essential for plant growth and development, and the degree of its availability significantly shapes ecosystems in different climate zones. How does an overabundance or deficiency of water affect the flora in Poland and different parts of the world?

The average consumer uses plastic packaging practically for just about everything: shopping, storing food, collecting waste. Very few people think about what happens to waste packaging and how it affects the environment.

The miner fly Liriomyza sativae (Blanchard) (Diptera: Agromyzidae) is an insect of economic importance for tomato culture. The conventional control with insecticides is complex due to the mining eating habit that provides protection to the larvae inside the leaves. Therefore, farmers can opt for biological control agents, or substances that provide protection to the plant. Thus, the objective of our research was to evaluate the use of silicon to induce resistance in tomato plants against L. sativae. The results showed that in tomato plants treated with SiO2/F and K2SiO3/F there was a reduction in the net reproduction rate (Ro), in the intrinsic rate of increase in number (rm), in the finite rate of increase (λ), in the average interval between generations (IMG), in the doubling time (TD), in the number of eggs/ female/day and the accumulated egg laying of F1 females of L. sativae. The products SiO2/F and K2SiO3/F gave the tomato a protective effect against injuries caused by L. sativae.

The Marceli Nencki Foundation for Supporting Biological Sciences is a non-governmental organization that conducts public benefit activities. The statutory goal of the Foundation is to support scientific, popularization, and educational efforts in the field of biological sciences. The Foundation focuses its activities primarily on students and young scientists who wish to bring biological sciences closer to young people and foster their creative development. Close cooperation with the Nencki Institute and the promotion of its scientific heritage result in many joint initiatives, including lectures, workshops, study visits, Art and Science, and coorganized scientific conferences. The Foundation began its activities on November 14, 2012. Its founders were professors from Nencki Institute and members of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

A gigantic amounts of data and information on molecules that constitute the very complex cell machinery have been collected, classified and stored in data banks. Although we posses enormous amount of knowledge about the properties and functions of thousands of molecular entities, we are still far from understanding how they do work in a living cell. It is clear now that these molecules (genes, proteins) are not autonomous, that there is no direct linear relation between genotype and phenotype, and that the majority of functions are carried and executed by concerted molecular activity, and that the majority of diseases are multifactorial. A basic property of the matter in a living cell (both normal and pathologic) is an interaction between variety of macromolecules, mainly proteins, genes (DNA) etc. In a process of self-organization they are able to form an active molecular biologic system – a complex, labile and dynamic network which integrity is secured by non-covalent bounds. In this essay some basic properties of network structure and the universal rules that govern them are described. Network or system biology is promising new research approach in biology and medicine.

The paper comprises the review of all 23 known valid species along with synonyms and polytomic keys based on morphological features. Mature specimens of 8 species occur in fishes, 4 in birds, 11 in mammals. Each species settles in a definite section of the digestive tract. The structure of a population is dependent upon the time which has passed since the moment of invasion and the intensity of infestation. Acathocephalans can be found in hosts all the year round, but incomplete seasonality of the occurrence of 2 fish parasites has been recorded. Fish parasites show wide specificity in relation to the hosts mentioned while bird and mammal parasites specificity is narrow. The majority of acanthocephalan species have circumpolar distribution but only 3 have been found inside the polar circle and the other 7 are common in the environs of subcontinental archipelagoes. Acanthocephalans do not yield precedence as far as the diversity of species and infestation intensity are concerned in the Antarctic to other groups of parasite helminths. Their great importance results from their mass occurrence in the vertebrates which are the focus of. man's practical interests — fishes, seals and whales.

This article provides new insight into somatization and its causes. it is the response to psychosomacontext paradigm visible in sociological idea of “functional illness”. It discusses foundations of classic meaning of sociosomatic paradigm. Based itself on the weakness of classical sociosomatic the text gives the new version of it. Is it possible to find a sociological category that would be as an equivalent of stress in the psychosomatic paradigm? Is it possible that its function and influence would be the same in the sociosomatic view? Do sociosomatic illnesses exist? This article is the first attempt to answer these questions

The effects of two native isolates of Beauveria bassiana, AM-118 and BB3, were evaluated on the predatory coccinellid, Cryptolaemus montrouzieri by measuring several developmental parameters and intermediary metabolism. Treatment with both isolates significantly increased the length of each developmental stage compared to the control except for the eggs and adults. The preovipositional period in the adults treated with BB3 significantly increased compared to those treated with AM-118 and the control. Other parameters, including longevity, length of oviposition period and fecundity, showed no significant differences between treatments. Although there were no significant differences in the parameters of net reproduction rate ( R₀) and gross reproduction rate ( GRR) between the control and fungal treated C. montrouzieri, the intrinsic rate of population increase ( r) and finite rate of population (λ) for the control treatments were significantly higher. The activities of both aminotransferases in the larvae and the adults treated with both isolates significantly increased 96 hours post-treatment compared to the control. Although similar results were recorded for acid phosphatase activity, alkaline phosphatase activity showed no significant differences in larvae and adults between the treatments. The amount of protein significantly decreased in the larvae and the adults treated with both isolates after 96 hours, while the amount of triglyceride significantly reduced in the treated larvae compared to control. No significant differences were observed in adults. Our results indicated that both native isolates of B. bassiana may affect life fitness of C. montrouzieri but isolate AM-118 was more compatible than BB3.

On indifference in the world of animals and on whether, with great effort, humans can manage to detach themselves from their biological nature.

This review compiles the pioneers of biological sciences who have been born and educated on the territories, which has got political independence as Poland state in 1918. Their work and passing knowledge to the next generations had a great impact not only on the progress in science but also on a newly formed Polish society. Many of these contributions laid foundations for chemistry, physics, biochemistry, genetics and other biological sciences.

Structural biology is concerned with the three-dimensional atomic structure of the molecules of life, proteins and nucleic acids. It was born in mid-1950s with a visionary application of X-ray diffraction to structure determination of protein crystals, and for several decades “structural biology” and “protein crystallography” were synonymous. In the 1980s structural biology received new experimental support from NMR spectroscopy, but a true breakthrough occurred only recently, with the development of atomic-resolution cryo-electron microscopy (cryo- EM), enabling direct visualization of macromolecular objects without the need of growing crystals. The Protein Data Bank (PDB) was created in 1971 with merely seven protein structures known. In mid-1990s the PDB entered an explosive growth phase, ignited by advances of biotechnological methods of protein production and, even more importantly, by widespread use of synchrotrons as extremely powerful X-ray sources. The technological advances did not stop there, and today we have on offer ever more powerful X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs), producing astronomically bright femtosecond X-ray pulses, which allow studying the structure of nanometer-sized crystals or even of single macromolecules. Thanks to all those methodological developments, the PDB holds today over 210,000 experimental macromolecular structures, many of which (such as those related to HIV or SARS-CoV-2) have fundamental importance for medicine as targets for rational drug design. In addition to innovative experimental methodology, structural biology has recently seen a huge progress of artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods of protein structure prediction, capable now of quite accurate divination of the three-dimensional structure for billions of protein sequences in very short time. However, those machine-learning algorithms, such as AlphaFold, recognize patterns that have been seen before, while for truly new sequences and for oligomeric proteins the prediction is still less than certain and needs experimental validation. It appears then that experimental structural biology is not quite dead yet and will remain the main source of reliable novel structural information for the foreseeable future.

Krill population structure was studied in Western Antarctic in austral spring and summer 1986/87. At the end of October and the beginning of November in the waters around Elephant Island the mean krill length was 44 mm and sexually mature specimens dominated. Juveniles were absent. In the Bransfield Strait the mean E. superba length was 43 mm. and males slightly overdominated females. The share of females with spermatophores and of immature females was higher than in the Elephant Island area. Juveniles were also not recorded. Krill was most diversified around Elephant Island in January; juveniles and females with ovaries filled with eggs were recorded. It was found that 84% of krill population was infested by ciliate protozoans (Apostomatida).