He received his PhD in 1987 from Novosibirsk Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His post-doctoral training was done at the Limnological Institute, Irkutsk, Russia, as well as at Columbia University and the Public Health Research Institute, NY. Currently Dr. Mustaev is involved in drug discovery projects, development of highly sensitive fluorescent probes for biological applications and in studies of the molecular mechanisms of prokaryotic transcription.