The field of bioinformatics in Russia began precipitously developing few years ago, after that an urgent requirement for specialists in this field appeared. The scientific community of St. Petersburg decided to join forces and start training students for this speciality. Free bioinformatics courses oriented for secondary and senior students of mathematical and technical fields who are interested in bioinformatics were initialized on the base of St. Petersburg Academic University RAS. Currently, courses are being carried out in collaboration with leading research laboratories and companies of St. Petersburg working in the field of biotechnology and bioinformatics, and the biotechnology company Sequoia genetics, a unit of Alkor Bio Group, is among them. Sequoia genetics carries out laboratory studies for bioinformatic students that include demonstration of modern DNA and proteins methods, cell cultures. Two employees of Sequoia genetics are the lecturers of courses – Arseniy Smirnov, the Head of Medical Genetics direction, and Anton Bragin, the leader of bioinformatics group in Sequoia genetics.

- Modern research methods in biology allow obtaining large amounts of data, that are extremely difficult to manipulate using classical methods, - explains Arseniy Smirnov, - To create the programs appropriate to obtained data we need specific knowledge in the field of mathematics, programming, statistics, molecular biology, biotechnology and many other fields. For example, whole genome sequencing can't do without bioinformatics.