Long before I reached the age of reason, I was thrilled by the mystery of living and nonliving objects. And I still am. Coupled with my passion and love for puzzles, this feeling drove me to become an experimental biologist. As a young scientist I was not interested in curing diseases and saw pathologies as hints to what a normal life really is. And then I (almost accidentally) got a position at the Department of Virology of MSU where I met absolutely brilliant teachers who taught me about viruses (Vadim Agol), immune system (Harry Abelev) and cancer (Yury Vasiliev). My entry ticket to big science was research on endogenous viruses that showed me patterns and mysteries of eukaryotic genome plasticity in evolution and cancer that I am still trying to solve. For a long time I was striving to find a key to a mystery of progressive evolution. Now that I have found it, I dream of writing a book. When working in America, I became interested in developing new drugs that could help us understand and test the mechanisms of life of the living organism. I learned a lot about the mechanisms of toxicity of anticancer drugs and radiation, came up with some ideas on how to protect the organism from their damaging effect without inhibiting their anticancer activity. Gradually I came to realize that it is not only malignancy as such that we should fight - we must also find a way to undermine its underlying cause, which is the mechanism of cell evolution. I believe I know how to do it. I dream of writing a book on the mechanisms of progressive evolution; I also want to prove that there is a permanent solution to cancer problem based on the inhibiting of its creative adaptivity, and I want to create a precursor of an anti-aging drug.