  After a brief survey of the appearance of quantum algebras in diverse
contexts of quantum gravity, we demonstrate that the particular deformed
algebras, which arise within the approach of J.Nelson and T.Regge to 2+1
anti-de Sitter quantum gravity (for space surface of genus g) and which are
basic for generating the algebras of independent quantum observables, are in
fact isomorphic to the nonstandard q-deformed analogues U'_q(so_n) (introduced
in 1991) of Lie algebras of the orthogonal groups SO(n), with n linked to g as
n=2g+2.
