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y
ou don't have to know
Russian to work at the
Weizmann Institute, but
these days it certainly
helps. One now hears Russian all
over the campus, and in some
labs it reigns supreme. Dr. Levy
Ulanovsky heads a lab where a
prominent team of young re-
searchers is developing novel
technologies for deciphering
genes.
While Dr. Ulanovsky was once
a leading spokesman for re-
fuseniks and an underground
Hebrew teacher in Moscow, he
has devoted himself entirely to
science since coming to Israel in
1979. After earning his Ph. D. at
the Institute's Feinberg Gradu-
ate School and doing postdoctor-
al research with Nobel laureate
Professor Walter Gilbert at Har-
vard, he set up his own research
group in Weizmann's Depart-
ment of Structural Biology.
Everybody on his team hap-
pens to speak Russian, Dr.
Ulanovsky explains, because
when he started hiring people
some three years ago, most avail-
able scientists were new immi-
grants from Russia. Between
1989 and 1993, some 8,000 sci-
entists came to Israel from the
former Soviet Union, and about
80 obtained positions in various
Weizmann Institute depart-
ments.
Dr. Ulanovsky's group recent-
ly scored a major coup in in-
creasing the efficiency of gene
deciphering. Its researchers de-
veloped a method that may help
fully automate this process, mak-
ing it 20 to 50 times faster and
drastically cheaper than with the
existing techniques. This, in turn,
would greatly accelerate the
multinational Human Genome
Project, an ambitious $3-billion,
15-year program intended to de-
code all human genes.
Dr. Ulanovsky says his re-
search draws from several disci-
plines — molecular biology,
physics and chemistry — all of
which are represented in his
group. He himself was trained in
Moscow as an astrophysicist, but
switched to studying the physi-
cal properties of DNA, the genetic
material of life, while doing his
doctorate at the Weizmann In-
stitute with another former re-
fusenik from Moscow, Professor
Edward Trifonov.
The chemist in his group is Dr.
Lev Kotler, who, in his own
words, landed at the Institute
"through a fantastic stroke of
luck." During a brief visit to a
U.S. company that had dealings
with Russia, Dr. Ulanovsky
heard about the research in
biotechnology that Dr. Kotler was
conducting in Moscow. He sug-
gested that Dr. Kotler contact
him upon his arrival in Israel.
Two months after immigrating
in 1990, Dr. Kotler joined Dr.
Ulanovsky's team in Rehovot.
A second recent immigrant on
the team is Dr. Irina Sobolev,
who worked as a molecular bi-
ologist in Russia for 20 years un-
til coming to Israel in 1991. Her
physicist husband, Vladimir, is
also working at the Institute.
Yet another member of the
group, Alexander Beskin,
dropped his nearly complete doc-
toral studies at the Moscow Agri-
cultural Institute of
Biotechnology in order to emi-
grate to Israel in 1990. Mr. Be-
skin, who became an observant
Jew and learned to speak fluent
Hebrew while still in Moscow, is
now working on his Ph. D. under
Dr. Ulanovsky's guidance.
In comparing their experiences
in Russia and Israel, the immi-
grant researchers dwell on the
He scolded the head
of the team for
turning his lab
into a synagogue.
similarities and differences. Dr.
Sobolev, for example, had lived
and worked in Pushchino-on-the-
Oka, a town near Moscow that
was home to some ten research
institutions employing thousands
of scientists. She says Pushchino
was much like the Weizmann
campus — small, scenic, and
dominated by academic life —
which makes her feel quite at
home here. The one big differ-
ence, predictably enough, is the
freedom from government or po-
litical interference that Israeli
scientists enjoy.
Mr. Beskin says one thing he
was glad to leave behind in Rus-
sia was the anti-Semitism often
experienced by Jewish scientists
even after the advent of glasnost.
For example, when three Jewish
researchers were hired in his lab-
oratory — a rare occurrence that
was probably due to an oversight
on part of the administration —
the institute director scolded the
head of the research team for
"turning his lab into a synagogue"
and prohibited him from hiring
any more Jews.