With about 120 employees, National Institute of Biology (NIB) is the largest independent Public Research Institution for Life Sciences in Slovenia.The Institute was established by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia in 1960.

The basic activity of the Institute has been and continues to be basic, developmental and applicative research in the fields of biotechnology, biophysics, biomedicine and system biology. 

NIB research programmes take place within the Department of Organisms and Ecosystems Research, Department of Genetic Toxicology and Cancer Biology, Department of Biotechnology and Systems Biology and Marine Biological Station, and focus on topics ranging from viruses, plant and animal species to humans and their environment. Since 2000, NIB holds the quality management standard ISO 9001:2000 and has acquired the Good Laboratory Practice certificate according to the ISO/IEC 17025 standard in 2003.

Vision: We wish to create elite knowledge and technologies in the field of life sciences and their environments as an internationally renowned autonomous institution. We will be taking care of the satisfaction and education of top-level personnel through good organization and state-of-the-art equipment. We will ensure our long-term development in close association with the society and the business sector

Contact                                

Prof. Dr. Maja Ravnikar (Head of the team)

Email: maja.ravnikar@nib.si

Tel.: 386 (0)59 232 801

Team

Missions

We are dedicated to the research and diagnostics of mostly plant, but also human viruses. We study their epidemiology, host interaction and transmission routes, giving special emphasis to the water as such as route.

We also provide services to industry, on detection, characterization and quantification of viruses.

Regarding PVY we are actively involved on its research from different points of view. We study the interaction of PVY with its hosts using system biology tools. We have also improved its diagnostics using novel tools such as LAMP, qPCR, ddPCR and NGS. We have visualized the movement of PVY through the plant using a PVY GFP infective clone, and recently we are researching the evolution of PVY populations (quasispecies) using NGS and bioinformatics tools.

Recent main projects funded in the field include several national and international projects, for example :

• ARIMNet Emeramb (EU) : Emerging viruses and virus vectors in mediterranean basin crops
• ARRS PVY Interactions (Slovenian research agency) : Insights into the protein interactions involved in the Potato virus Y Potato relation

Skills                                 

• Virus diagnostics
• Quantitative PCR
• Droplet digital     PCR
• LAMP
• NGS
• Virus host  interactions
• OMICS