FUNDAMENTAL AND APPLIED LECTINOLOGY IN RESEARCH OF PROFESSOR ANTONINA YASHCHENKO (on the occasion of 75th birthday anniversary)

Abstract

Professor Antonina Yashchenko belongs to the group of outstanding morphologists, who developed and continue working productively for the popularization and implementation of the fundamental aspects, as well as spreading of applied lectinology methods in the morphologic research. As the result of her numerous studies in the field of lectin histochemistry were received new data on the applicability of a set of original lectin preparations purified and characterized in the «Lectinotest» from raw materials of the Carpathian region. Lectin-peroxidase and lectin-gold conjugates were applied in immunobiological research, light and electron microscopy, the methods of indirect identification of lectin receptors were worked out. Eventually these results were collected in a DSci dissertation of A. Yashchenko «Lectins as markers in normal and pathological conditions», conferred in 2004. This dissertation included a huge amount of authorized observations concerning wide possibilities of lectin histochemistry methods for studies of cell differentiation, identification of cellular subpopulations and diagnosis of pathological processes. Professor Yashchenko intensely studied the patterns of the rearrangement and redistrubution of lectin-reactive glycopolymers in the process of embryonic and postnatal morphogenesis, found out the possibilities of lectins’ application as selective histochemical markers of certain types of cells; studied the heterogeneity of lectins binding to cellular subpopulations depending on their tissue and organ specificity, as well as on the degree of their differentiation. Based on the results of the conducted research Prefessor Yashchenko published more than 250 papers in the professional journals, as well received 2 certificates of inventions. Published in 1999 «Atlas of Microanatomy of the Oral Cavity Organs» of her authorship got «The Yaroslav Mudryy award» of the Academy of Sciences of Higher School of Ukraine. Professor Antonina Yashchenko participated as a co-author in the National textbooks «Histology, cytology, and embryology» for Medical (2018) and Dentistry (2020) students. For these, as well as other morphology-related activities, in 2021 she was granted «A honorary award of the Ukrainian scientific society of anatomists, histologists, embryologists and topographo-anatomists»