ASU Faculty of Biology student undertaking internship at MSU

ASU master’s degree student Vasiliy Kelbin was undertaking a scientific internship in laboratory study of macromycetes at the Department of Mycology and Algology of the Faculty of Biology of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University.

“The internship gave me, as a young mycology specialist, an opportunity to make more contacts among the leading mycologists, study new theoretical material and acquire practical skills in studying the pure culture of basidial macromycetes. While undertaking the internship, I attended narrowly based lectures on such subjects as mathematical methods in mycology and algology, methods of fungi field research, and mycology. I also studied and applied to practice the algorithm of the description of morphological and cultural macro- and micro-characteristics of basidial fungi strains. In cooperation with the Department staff I conducted the experiments on detecting the fungi strains conservation after cryopreservation.

In the course of the internship, the topic of my scientific and research work was specified: “Basidial Macromycetes of Altai Krai with the Focus on Species Promising for Biotechnology in terms of Getting the Raw Material for Medical and Industrial Purposes”. The knowledge and skills obtained during the internship will allow me to write a master’s thesis at a modern methodical level, to use the material in further scientific publications, and, the most important, to use the technologies of fungi growing that I mastered for developing up-to-date drugs against cancer,” says Vasiliy about his internship.

Macromycetes are fungi of macroscopic size. For example, the well-known pileate fungi or basidiomycetes are macromycetes. Basidiomycetes or Basidiomycota is is one of two large phyla that, together with the Ascomycota, constitute the subkingdom Dikarya (often referred to as the "higher fungi") within the kingdom Fungi.