In Memoriam: Professor Iya Kiknadze (1930–2017)

With very deep sympathies and very great regret we announce that our best friend, the dearest colleague and excellent researcher Professor Iya Kiknadze passed away in Novosibirsk on December 17, 2017. She was a scientist who made a great and very valuable contribution in the field of cytology – structure and function of the eukaryotic chromosome, cytogenetics and karyotype evolution of family Chironomidae. Iya Kiknadze was the founder of a very important field in the Cell Biology in Russia – studies of the functional and structural organization of the salivary gland polytene chromosomes in Diptera, especially in the Chironomidae. In many of her studies she followed gene activity during ontogenesis (Kiknadze 1975, Kiknadze et al. 1989). One of the most important and impressive studies was dedicated to gene activity of the key structures of the polytene chromosomes: Balbiani Ring (BR) and Nucleolus Organizer Region (NOR). Her study on the transcriptional activity of these structures represents a great contribution to the genome research on the Chironomidae. Even more, the study on the functional activity of these structures during larval development of the model Chironomid species Chironomus riparius Mg. (Kiknadze 1978) provides valuable information about the processes of the environmental mutagenesis. The chromosome map of this species developed by Iya Kiknadze and her collaborators (Kiknadze et al. 1991) is successfully used in the field of genotoxicology for monitoring the environment and CompCytogen 12(1): 141–144 (2018)