NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MONGOLIA

Our studies focus on all levels of biological organization, which we can divide into thefollowing main areas of research:Cellular and molecular biology and biotechnologyPhysiology and organismal biology of plants and animals; Biophysics of photosynthesis;Bioinformatics (structural analysis of protein structure); CAM (Crassulacean Acid Metabolism)plants in Mongolia; Biochemistry, microbiology and biotechnological applications oftraditional dairy products; Enzyme research; Biochemistry and biotechnology of medicinalplants; Molecular cell biophysics; Eukaryotic genome research, Gene and genome bank ofMongolian species.Biodiversity, ecology and evolutionary biologyMongolian pastoral livestock husbandry and its ecological and evolutionary characteristicsand consequences; Research and conservation of biological diversity of Mongolia(invertebrates, vertebrates, plants, fungi, microorganisms, aquatic and forest resources);Population, evolutionary genetics and metagenomics; Disease ecology; Effects of climatechange and long term monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem functioning; Land andecosystem degradation, restoration and reforestation.Priority research area: Ecology and biodiversity research by the Department of EcologyIn addition to traditional natural history studies on fauna and flora of Mongolia, membersof the Department of Ecology are running some groundbreaking research programs incollaboration with international scientists. We only highlight two research programs activelybeing pursued by our ecologists, as part of International Long Term Ecological Research(ILTER) Network. With scientists of University of Pennsylvania, we are implementinga six-year project entitled “Ecological and evolutionary effects of climate change andanthropogenic influences in Mongolia,” funded by the NSF (USA) within its Partnership inInternational Research and Education Program.Mongolia has already experienced more rapid rates of warming than the global average,which has profound ecological and evolutionary implications in sustainable naturalresources management in Mongolia. As a result of this project, collaborative scientificpapers detailing the effects of topography, experimental warming and livestock grazing onecosystem functioning in the Lake Hovsgol area have already been published in high-impactprofessional journals. Studying some plant species, we found that there was a decrease inleaf 15N with increasing elevation; that fact, together with measures of soil 15N suggestsgreater N processing at the moister, more productive, lower elevation, and more N fixation atthe upper elevation. Moreover, using open-top passive warming chambers (OTC) for climatemanipulation, we show that OTCs reduced flower production and delayed peak floweringin graminoids in lower slopes, but affected only forbs on the upper slopes, of landscapescalevariation in climate change studies. It was also found that vegetation loss and climatemanipulation reduced soil moisture, the important driver in ecosystem productivity, andthat the monthly or seasonal averages of soil moisture provided poor information about theinterplay among factors affecting the soil moisture regime in this system.The second area of research we highlight is with scientists in Korea on “Metagenomicanalysis of soil communities in diverse habitat types of Mongolia.” currently funded by TWAS.We have described soil bacterial communities from a wide range of habitats under differentvegetation types and edaphic conditions of Mongolia. We use a modern culture-independentmetagenomic approach for extracting 16S rRNA from soils and a next-generationpyrosequencing technique. We found several potentially novel, phylogenetically distinctbacterial phyla. Importantly, we determined the relationship between bacterial communitycomposition and variety of environmental variables, such as vegetation type, soil texture, pH,salinity, moisture content, and humus content, contributing to a better understanding of thestructure of soil-borne bacterial communities and their functioning in the ecosystem. Finally,we emphasize that we are currently participating in a global-scale meta-experiment on thespecies richness-productivity relationship.20Priority research area: Medicinal Natural Products and Plant BiotechnologyThe aim of the research work conducted in the T.Dash Memorial Laboratory of BioorganicChemistry and Pharmacognosy is to do systematic in vitro screening on the library ofMongolian plant extracts for their biological activities, activity-guided isolation of targetcompounds and structure determination of them. Also we have close collaboration withother researchers on chemical modification of isolated active compounds to improve theirpharmacological activity and obtain them by semi- and total synthesis to introduce potentialresults into industry as dietary products, functional foods and drugs. Quality evaluationof Mongolian traditional crude drugs is also part of our research interest. We published