Nikolay Koltsov

Koltsov Nikolai Konstantinovich (07/15/08/1872, Moscow - 12/02/1940, Leningrad), Russian biologist, author of the idea of ​​matrix synthesis of hereditary molecules. Born in the family of an accountant of a large fur company. At the age of eight he entered the Moscow gymnasium, from which he graduated with a gold medal. In his youth, he collected plants, collected seeds and insects, walked the entire Moscow province, and later the entire Crimea. In 1890 he entered the natural department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University, where he specialized in comparative anatomy and comparative embryology. Koltsov's leader during this period was the head of the school of Russian zoologists M. A. Menzbir. In 1894, he took part in the IX Congress of Russian Naturalists and Physicians, where he made a presentation on the importance of cartilaginous centers in the development of the pelvis of vertebrates, and then performed fundamental research The belt of the hind limbs and the hind limbs of vertebrates, for which he was awarded a gold medal. After graduating from the university (1894), Koltsov was sent abroad for two years. He worked in laboratories in Germany and at marine biological stations in Italy. The collected material served as the basis for the master's thesis, which Koltsov defended in 1901.

Even in the years of study, there was a turn of Koltsov's interests from comparative anatomy to cytology. In 1902, Koltsov was again sent abroad, where he worked for two years in the largest biological laboratories and at sea stations. During his second trip abroad, he completed the first part of his classic Studies on the Form of the Cell, A Study on the Sperm of Decapods in Connection with General Considerations on the Organization of the Cell (1905), intended for his doctoral dissertation. This work, together with the second part of Studies on the Form of the Cell, published in 1908, established itself in science as the Koltsov principle of form-determining cell skeletons (cytoskeletons).

Returning to Russia in 1903, Koltsov, without stopping scientific research, engaged in intensive pedagogical and scientific-organizational work. The course of cytology, begun in 1899, grew into a hitherto unknown course in general biology. The second course taught by Koltsov, Systematic Zoology, was very popular with students.

Koltsov was an active member of the circle headed by the Bolshevik P.K. Sternberg. Shortly after the suppression of the revolution, Koltsov's doctoral dissertation was supposed to be defended, but he refused to defend it on such days behind closed doors. In 1909 for participation in political activity Koltsov was suspended from his studies, and in 1911, together with other leading teachers of Moscow University, he resigned and until 1918 taught at the Higher Women's Courses and at the Moscow Shanyavsky People's University. In the latter, he created an excellent laboratory and trained a galaxy of famous biologists (M. M. Zavadovsky, A. S. Serebrovsky, S. N. Skadovsky, G. I. Roskin and others).

From the study of the supporting skeletal elements of the cell, Koltsov proceeds to the study of contractile structures. The third part of his Studies on cell shape appears - Studies on the contractility of the stalk of Zoothamnium alternans (1911), and then work on the effect of cations (1912) and hydrogen ions (1915) on physiological processes in the cell. These studies were of great importance for the establishment of the so-called physiological ion series, and also attracted the attention of Russian biologists to the most important problem of the active role of the environment and laid the foundation for a whole period in the development of physicochemical biology in Russia. In 1916, for the contribution to science made by Koltsov to this time, he was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1917 at the expense of the Moscow Society scientific institutes for Koltsov, the Institute of Experimental Biology was created, which for a long time remained the only biological research institution in the country not associated with teaching. In 1920, with the active participation of Koltsov, the Russian Eugenic Society arose, at the same time a eugenic department was organized at the Institute of Experimental Biology, which launched research on human medical genetics (the first work on the study of blood groups, the content of catalase in it, etc.), as well as on such issues of anthropogenetics as the inheritance of hair and eye color, the variability and heredity of complex traits in identical twins, etc. The first medical genetic consultation worked at the department. The Institute began the first theoretical research in the USSR on the genetics of Drosophila.

In 1927, at the 3rd congress of zoologists, anatomists and histologists, Koltsov delivered a report on the Physicochemical Foundations of Morphology, in which he expanded the general biological principles Omne vinum ex ovo and Omnis cellula ex cellula, declaring the paradoxical for those times principle Omnis molecula ex molecula - Every molecule from a molecule. At the same time, not any molecules were meant - it was about those hereditary molecules, on the reproduction of which, according to the idea first expressed by Koltsov, the morphophysiological continuity of the organization of living beings rests. Koltsov imagined these hereditary molecules as giant protein macromolecules that make up the axial genetically active structure of chromosomes, or, in Koltsov's terminology, a genoneme. Genetic information was encoded not by the alternation of DNA nucleotides, but by the sequence of amino acids in a high polymeric protein chain. Koltsov associated the process of transcription with the replication of the protein part of the nucleoprotein backbone of chromosomes. He was misled by the visual disappearance of thymonucleic acid in late oogenesis and in giant chromosomes.

In December 1936, a special session of VASKhNIL was convened to combat bourgeois genetics. N. I. Vavilov, A. S. Serebrovsky, G. J. Möller, N. K. Koltsov, M. M. Zavadovsky, G. D. Karpechenko, G. A. Levitsky, N. P. Dubinin. Against bourgeois genetics - T. D. Lysenko, N. V. Tsitsin, I. I. Present. Koltsov, not sharing Vavilov's optimism about the fact that the building of genetics remained unshaken, wrote a letter to the president of VASKhNIL A. I. Muralov, where he wrote about the responsibility of all scientists for the state of science in the country. The answer was given on March 26, 1937, at a general meeting of the VASKhNIL activists dedicated to the results of the plenum of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Muralov attacked Koltsov's politically harmful theories on genetics and eugenics. Works on eugenics served as the main pretext for the persecution of Koltsov. On March 4, 1939, the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences considered the issue of intensifying the fight against existing pseudoscientific perversions and created a commission to familiarize themselves with the work of the Koltsov Institute. They demanded from Koltsov that he give in the generally accepted form ... an analysis of his false teachings in ... scientific journal or, better, in all magazines ... having fulfilled an elementary duty to the party. But Koltsov did not do this, and he was fired from the post of director, leaving his laboratory behind him.

Material from the Uncyclopedia

Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov - Russian biologist, founder of domestic experimental biology.

A passion for zoology led the future scientist to Moscow University, from which he graduated with honors. From the very beginning of its scientific activity Koltsov took an active part in public life. Together with a group of leading professors and teachers of Moscow University, Nikolai Konstantinovich defiantly left the university in protest against the repressions of the tsarist government and began working at the private Shanyavsky University. Here his remarkable talent as an educator and organizer was revealed.

A few years later, a constellation of outstanding researchers gathered at the first biological research institution in Russia, the Institute of Experimental Biology, founded by Koltsov in 1917. The friendly, creative atmosphere of the institute contributed to new discoveries. Nikolai Konstantinovich belonged to scientists who pay more attention to their students than to drawing up their own ideas on paper. scientific works. He published only a few dozen articles, including those that outlined the ingenious foresight of "hereditary molecules" discovered only many years later, and the principle of matrix reproduction of chromosomes. This allows us to consider Koltsov one of the founders of modern molecular biology and genetics.

Among the students and associates of N. K. Koltsov, S. S. Chetverikov is the founder of modern population and evolutionary genetics, B. L. Astaurov, who for the first time in the world practically solved the problem of sex regulation in animals (this work was directly entrusted to him by N. K. Koltsov ), N. V. Timofeev-Resovsky - one of the founders of radiation biology and the modern theory of microevolution - and many other outstanding scientists. Koltsov created the Moscow experimental school of zoologists, cytologists and geneticists.

A friend of N. I. Vavilov, M. Gorky, N. A. Semashko and other prominent figures of science and culture of our country, a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, later a full member of the All-Union Agricultural Academy named after V. I. Lenin, N. K. Koltsov led the institute he had created until the end of his days. Now this institute has been transformed into the N. K. Koltsov Institute of Developmental Biology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; it develops many areas of research laid down by an outstanding scientist.

“The fate of Russia depends primarily on whether it will be possible to survive and multiply in it ... the active type (people) or the inert type will prevail, and the precious genes of activity will die.”

N.K. Koltsov

On Easter 1877, the youngest, Nikolenka, was presented with a red ball on a string. For it it was possible to pull him from the ceiling. Koltsov recalled: “But I wanted the ball to rise higher. I climbed up the window, opened the window and pushed the ball out. Then he flew up! But the string slipped out of my hands, and the ball flew away completely. The nanny and older children rushed to catch him and, of course, without success.

A balloon is a symbol of a child's dream. It will appear more than once in the art of the twentieth century. In the picture S.A. Luchishkin's "The ball flew away" (1926), in the film "The Red Balloon" by Albert Lamoris (1956) ... Okudzhava also sang about it: "The girl is crying - the ball has flown away ..." But Kolya Koltsov did not cry. He liked that the ball rose higher and higher, to where doves flashed in bright chalk spots above the Kremlin. Between this spring and another, gloomy day, the life of the great Russian biologist lay.

In 1912, he wrote to his future wife from Paris about flying in an airplane: “The feeling of flying is completely new, unexpected. There was no fear at all. But I wanted to move, to take an active part in the flight.” In the 1930s, Soviet aeronautic vehicles set height records. Of course, the opportunity to study the mutagenic effect of cosmic radiation will attract Koltsov's attention. On the stratospheric balloon "1-bis USSR" its fruit flies will rise to a height of 20,000 m. The sky was mesmerizing...

Biology is destiny

Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov was born into a Moscow family of modest means and strong foundations. He lost his father early. He, as if in a folk song, "froze in the steppe." What a Russian fate!

At the gymnasium, of course, he received gold medal. In 1890 he entered the Moscow University, in the excellent classical zoological school of Professor M.A. Menzbier. And again he received a gold medal for his student work "Girdle of the hind limbs and hind limbs of vertebrates." But the thinking student quickly ceased to be satisfied with morphology, the external, descriptive approach in biology. Koltsov began to reach out to histology and embryology.

Meanwhile, at the turn of the century, Russian science, our biologists will make a number of major, revolutionary discoveries. Domestic science successfully laid the foundations for Russia's development for decades to come. It was a bid for a place among the world's first powers. Nobel laureates-biologists Ivan Pavlov and Ilya Mechnikov walked ahead. Russian "Americanists" should remember that overseas biologists caught up with us only in 1933. Their first laureate will be Thomas Morgan.

Domestic patrons made their significant contribution to education and science. In 1897, Nikolai Koltsov received a scholarship and was sent to continue his education in European laboratories. Menzbier was perspicacious: “I hope you bring more than one dissertation with you!”

The Neapolitan Marine Zoological Station will play a special role in the scientist's life. Initially, in 1868-1869, it was founded in Sicily by the Russian explorer Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay and his half-Russian friend Anton Dorn. Dorn later moved her to Naples. There Koltsov will successfully complete his work on the development of the head of the lamprey, and thus "complete the comparative anatomical period" of his research.

In Naples, he met Hans Driesch, who, together with Wilhelm Roux, became the founder of a new discipline - the mechanics (biology) of development. G. Gerbst was another neighbor in the boarding house. He was busy with the influence of individual ions sea ​​water for egg development sea ​​urchin. The Russian scientist drew here the first hints for future plans.

It was an interesting time for the birth of a new, experimental biology.

Returning to Moscow in 1899, Koltsov defended his master's thesis. Privatdozent he reads a course of cytology.

In 1902, the scientist meets in Europe and begins to investigate the effect of ions on the form of free animal cells. He does not immediately find his object of study. They became very different in form of sperm of sea crayfish (lobsters). Remembering the lectures of Professor A.G. Stoletova, Koltsov creates a model of changing the shape of animal cells. The more powerful and durable the elastic formations inside the cell are, the more the latter deviate from the shape of the ball. They resist the internal osmotic pressure, balanced by the osmotic pressure of the external environment.

This is how the “ring principle of cell organization” was born, and with this came international recognition. So - not in the second half, but at the dawn of the twentieth century - the discovery of the cytoskeleton took place. Together with his doctoral dissertation, Koltsov will bring physical and chemical biology to Russia.

Revolution, genetics, evolution

Broad ideas required associates. A favorite of students, Koltsov began to grow his own school at Moscow University, continued at Guerrier's higher courses for women and at General Shanyavsky's People's University.

According to his political views, the scientist was close to the left. In the January days of 1906, he refused to defend his doctoral dissertation behind closed doors - the students were on strike. Later, his brochure “In Memory of the Fallen. Victims from among the Moscow students in the October and December days. He is being squeezed out of Moscow University. He will finally leave it in 1911, along with a large group of professors and teachers. It was a protest against the offensive of the Minister of Education L.A. Casso for university autonomy.

At the University of Shanyavsky Koltsov creates the world's first laboratory of experimental biology. In 1916, he publicly set the task of changing the heredity of organisms by acting on them with radiation and active chemical compounds. In the same year, at the suggestion of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, the “leftist” and only master (!) Koltsov was elected to the Imperial Academy. He refuses to be elected a full academician: this required moving to the capital, and in Moscow Koltsov was already “overgrown” with students. In 1917, Moscow entrepreneurs financed the creation of the Koltsovo Institute of Experimental Biology.

Revolution, famine Civil War mixed up all the cards. But scientists and enlightened Bolsheviks (N.A. Semashko) will be able to "drag" through the revolution a few scientific institutions. Despite his arrest in 1920 (with subsequent release by order of Lenin), Koltsov did not stop his work.

As it becomes clear, back in 1915, the idea of ​​​​a biological matrix began to mature in him (in the final version - 1927). Simultaneously with the teacher's interest in genetics, the first professional geneticist in Russia, A.S. Serebrovsky. Koltsov is returned to Moscow University. In 1925, his institute received a beautiful mansion on Vorontsov Pole (today it houses the Indian embassy) and soon became internationally famous. The “combat mission” of the Institute is genetics and evolution.

biological matrix

Koltsov and his school will largely determine the face of biology in the 20th century. First of all, this is the matrix hypothesis, the core of molecular biology. According to Koltsov, biological traits are encoded in chemical structure hereditary molecule (genoneme). "Every molecule is from a molecule." He assumed the protein nature of the matrix, but at the same time postulated a number of its properties that are fully applicable to nucleic acids. Koltsov saw genes as separate sections of the genoneme. He wrote about assembling a new genomeme on an existing matrix.

Mutations appear due to changes in the chemical structure of the macromolecule. The simplest of these changes is methylation: “Genes should be recognized as capable of variability, in particular mutations, since in any organic compound a hydrogen atom can be replaced in a stepwise manner by a CH3 group. The scientist predicted this effect back in 1915!

Thus, Koltsov's ideas about genome methylation have already turned 100 years old! This is the mechanism of epigenetic (change in work, gene expression that does not affect DNA sequences) changes recognized today. “It is known for certain that DNA methylation… controls all genetic processes” (B.F. Vanyushin, 2005). From survival in the conditions of the Leningrad blockade to the notorious vernalization. Using this phenomenon, supposedly giving an increase in yields, Trofim Lysenko made a name for himself.

The canonical "history" of molecular biology is known. According to her, the founders of this science were physicists (Erwin Schrödinger and others). Simon Shnol once showed how it really was.

In 1935, Koltsov's student Timofeev-Resovsky, together with his younger German colleagues K. Zimmer and M. Delbrück, published the Green Notebook, or TZD. In it, starting from Koltsov's ideas about hereditary molecules, the researchers tried to determine the size of an individual gene. They relied on the genetics of Drosophila and used the radiobiological theory of the target.

In 1943, the Green Notebook was read by the classic physicist Erwin Schrödinger. He was delighted. He began to lecture on this topic and wrote a book, in Russian translation it is called “What is life from the point of view of physics?”. He popularly outlined the content of the work, supplementing it with his not always correct considerations. As they once joked, physicists often judge biology like a virgin judges love. In his book, whole passages from Koltsov's ideas are easily traced. Schrödinger did not name his authorship.

The Parisian molecular biologist Michel Morang does not agree with the canonical history of this science. He began by emphasizing in his version the role of the French Nobel laureates, displacing the Anglo-Saxons in its history. Digging deeper, Moranzh (2011) discovered two large works by Koltsov on French- 1935 and 1939. The French researcher confirms Koltsov's authorship in creating the matrix hypothesis. Moreover, he claims that Koltsov also owns the concept of "epigenetics" (1935). It was to him, and not to K. Waddington, who appropriated the honor of this discovery (1942).

Just as the “leftist” Koltsov was ousted from Moscow University under “bloody tsarism”, so the “rightist”, and then a firm opponent of Lysenkoism, Koltsov was deprived of the chair and directorship in the institute he had created. During the years of Lysenko's reign (1941–1965), Koltsov's name was banned. And this was the time of the formation of a new, molecular biology.

When Koltsov was "allowed", many of the achievements of the scientist and his school had already been "adapted" to the West. And in their homeland they were overgrown with the grass of oblivion and therefore they were seen as Western miracle discoveries.

Human Breed Improvement

Even before the revolution, Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov and Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky had a common goal - "the organization of Russian science." Vernadsky, stingy with praise, saw in Koltsov "a great scientist and conscientious citizen ... a brilliant lecturer, teacher and organizer." Koltsov's school confirmed many of the teacher's guesses and continued his directions.

N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky, V.V. Sakharov and I.A. Rapoport - creators of radiation and chemical mutagenesis. The first and third were nominated for the Nobel Prize. They did not become laureates only for political reasons. Even before the war, Koltsov was successfully engaged in genetic engineering (N.P. Dubinin). Many thousands of clones of organisms were bred (B.L. Astaurov). B.V. Kedrovsky showed the role of nucleic acids in a living cell. Collaborators and students of Nikolai Konstantinovich (S.S. Chetverikov and others) were pioneers in the synthetic theory of evolution.

Tubs of lies and slops fell on Koltsov because of eugenics. He, along with the wonderful domestic geneticist Yu.A. Filipchenko became its founder in Soviet Russia. Koltsov believed that biology stands above social and political currents. He looked at them as a learned and conscientious citizen, concerned about the "saving of the people" (M.V. Lomonosov).

Koltsov did not separate eugenics from human genetics. But there was very little data from anthropogenetics, and eugenics for him was partly a social dream in the spirit of the early Gorky, a dream of a beautiful Man. On the other hand, “an interesting problem into an “interesting” historical era when ... a huge mass of people begin to starve, cut each other and shoot, ”Timofeev-Resovsky remarked sarcastically.

Koltsov saw the duality of the revolution. It is an impetus to development and an opportunity for many people to swim to the surface. At the same time, according to Koltsov, "the race is becoming poorer in active elements." On both sides, the most active, resolute, and convinced perish. The scientist drew on the science fiction of Herbert Wells for explanation. To conquer the Earth, the Martians, relying on genetics, had to carry out the extermination of "all individuals with an innate factor of independence." The rest would have submitted to the Martians.

The hints made in the 1920s were transparent. This process has not stopped for us. In 1926-1939, the losses of Russians from repressions were higher than the average for the country, while natural growth rates were lower. Vladimir Pavlovich Efroimson became a remarkable successor to this line of teacher research.

On December 2, 1940, having been poisoned by a portion of salmon in the restaurant of the Evropeyskaya Hotel in Leningrad, Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov passed away. This happened shortly after the arrest of Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov. Koltsov was brought in to testify. The investigators did not hear anything useful for themselves in the “Vavilov case”. He who is born to fly will not crawl. The very existence of Academicians Vavilov and Koltsov was a powerful barrier in the path of biology charlatans. And the fate of both was sealed.

The cause of Koltsov's death was called a sudden heart attack. The documents of the 2nd ambulance station of Leningrad tell a different story (Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences F 450, Op. 2, item 28). At 5 p.m. on November 27, 1940, he ate salmon in a restaurant. Weakness and signs of poisoning began to develop. Known means did not help. Continuous vomiting began, pain behind the sternum increased. The patient was hospitalized. At times he lost consciousness. The luminaries of medicine were powerless. At 10 am on December 2, he was gone. In the evening, his wife and colleague Maria Polievktovna committed suicide. AT last years constant persecution of her husband, she wore cyanide in her ring. Richard Goldschmidt writes: "It is simply a miracle that in the era of purges and executions he died a natural death." A friend of the great biologist was wrong. The miracle didn't happen. Koltsov was not arrested, but executed by the leader.

Russia had great story apart from the military. Koltsov was far ahead of his time, in terms of creative power he was akin to the heroes of the Renaissance. Even major Koltsovo scientists failed to fully appreciate his ideas - the time has not come. We still do not have a monument or even a memorial plaque to the scientist.

Valery Soyfer One hundred years have passed since the founding of the Institute of Experimental Biology in Moscow, headed by NK Koltsov.

The experiments of this researcher led to world-class discoveries. Before him, scientists believed that cells take their shape depending on the osmotic pressure of the substances they contain. Koltsov in 1903 came to the conclusion that the shape of the most delicate cells is supported by a solid cell framework, and proposed the term "cytoskeleton". The more powerful and branched the various scaffold structures, the more the shape of the cells deviates from the spherical. He studied intracellular strands in many types of cells, investigated their branching, used chemical methods to identify the conditions of cytoskeletal stability.

In 1910, experts at the University of Heidelberg applied the "Koltsov's rule" to single-celled organisms. In 1911, an updated edition of Koltsov's book on the cytoskeleton was published on German. In the same years, Richard Goldschmidt used the principle of Koltsov's cytoskeleton to explain the unusual shape of nerve and muscle cells, Darcy Thompson described Koltsov's principle in detail in the book "On Form and Growth", and Max Hertwig, who devoted the first two chapters of his book to Koltsov's ideas, put it in first place among biologists.

But erected in Soviet time Lenin and Stalin, the iron curtain made it almost impossible for scientists to travel abroad and speak at international forums; it was even difficult to send an article to a Western publication. Gradually, the principle of Koltsov was forgotten, and in 1931 the Frenchman Paul Wintreber (Paul Wintrebert) re-suggested the term "cytoskeleton" (cytosquelette). Biologists of our time are convinced that the concept of the cytoskeleton has developed quite recently.
N. K. Koltsov (1939) In January 1906, Koltsov was supposed to defend his doctoral dissertation. However, in December 1905, after a wave of workers' protests, by decision of the government, Moscow University was actually occupied by troops. As Nikolai Konstantinovich later recalled, the defense was appointed literally "a few days after the bloody suppression of the December revolution." “I refused to defend my dissertation on these days behind closed doors—students were on strike—and decided that I didn’t need a doctorate,” he wrote. “Later, with my speeches during the revolutionary months, I completely upset relations with the official professorship, and the thought of defending a dissertation no longer occurred to me.”.

In 1906, Koltsov published a pamphlet, the purpose and direction of which is perfectly explained by the explanation printed on the cover: “Memory of the fallen. Victims from among the Moscow students in the October and December days. Income from the publication goes to the Committee for Assistance to Prisoners and Amnestied. Price 50 kop. Moscow. 1906". The brochure was ordered to be confiscated, and the author was fired from Moscow University. He started looking for a new job.

Back in 1903, Koltsov taught the course "Organization of the Cell" at the Higher Women's Courses of Professor V.I. Gerrier, and on April 28, 1909, he began teaching at the Moscow City People's University, which was often called Shanyavsky's Private University.

In 1915, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences invited Koltsov to move to the northern capital, where they were going to elect him an academician and create a biological laboratory. However, Koltsov refused to leave Moscow and was forced to be content with the title of Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences.

In 1916, Koltsov was involved in the creation of a number of research institutes independent of the state with the money of patrons. In the summer of 1917, a few months before the Bolshevik coup, the Institute of Experimental Biology (IEB) was opened in Moscow, headed by N.K.

Russian intellectuals fought for decades against the gendarme attitude of tsarism towards the human person. Many of them welcomed the abdication of the king from power. But by its very first actions, the Leninist government alienated the best people Russia. Dissent fell into the category of state crimes. Naturally, the supporters of democracy were thinking about how to free the country from the dominance of insane Robespierres and bloodthirsty Marats. Groups of people arose who were looking for feasible and legal ways to liberate Russia from the rule of the Bolsheviks. In one of them, Koltsov was in the leading positions. The “National Center”, as the Chekists called this organization in their reports, was opened in 1920. N.K. was responsible for the financial side of the work in it (which means that his friends in the organization trusted him). In 1920, all identified conspirators - 28 people, including Koltsov - were arrested. The fact that they gathered at his apartment was also blamed on the professor.

Koltsov was sentenced to death. Fortunately, his close friend Maxim Gorky stood up for him, turning directly to Lenin. Thanks to his intercession, the sentence was first commuted to five years in prison, and soon Koltsov was released altogether, and he returned to lead his institute.

He sought to help the work of scientists throughout the country. He founded laboratories at the Commission for the Study of Productive Forces (KEPS), at the All-Union Institute of Animal Husbandry, a biological station in Bakuriani in Georgia, he also helped develop the Kropotov biological station, then his students, with his participation, created new research centers in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The Institute of Experimental Biology has gained a high reputation in the world. In January 1930, Richard Goldschmidt wrote: “I am amazed and still can not understand my impressions. I saw such a huge number of young people interested in genetics, which we cannot imagine in Germany. And many of these young geneticists are so versed in the most complex scientific issues, as we have only a few well-established specialists.

In 1927, Koltsov published a paper in which he reported that each chromosome contains a gigantic hereditary molecule that carries genetic records, and drew conclusions about how it could be arranged. He took into account that genes are arranged in a linear order on genetic maps, he took into account the chemical evidence for the existence of high-molecular structures such as cellulose or proteins, and physical descriptions crystal growth. Rice. 1. Drawing by N. K. Koltsov (1928), illustrating his hypothesis of the structure of giant hereditary molecules, according to which each chromosome of somatic cells carries two molecules with hereditary records in the form of genes. Each such molecule consists of two mirror strands. They contain genes (shown by individual paired symbols). The arrow indicates a gene in which one of the two alleles in paired threads is changed by a mutation Nikolai Konstantinovich suggested that hereditary molecules should contain two mirror parts and that genes are parts of these molecules (Fig. 1). Thus, the hero of our story has developed a new principle of chemistry - the complementarity of threads in double-stranded structures, supported by contacts between side chemical groups in two threads.

He explained the mechanism of preservation of the chemical structure of hereditary molecules during the division of chromosomes, formulating the matrix principle of reproduction of hereditary molecules. “I formulated this idea in the thesis: Omnis molecula e molevula, i.e., any (of course, complex organic) molecule arises from the surrounding solution only in the presence of an already prepared molecule, and the corresponding radicals are placed by opposition (van der Waals forces of attraction or forces of crystallization) to those points of the molecule present and serving as a seed, where the same radicals lie". Rice. 2. Drawing by N. K. Koltsov (1935), illustrating the possibility of sequential connection of many protein molecules into a giant hereditary molecule In those years when Koltsov was developing these hypotheses, the chemistry of polymers was in its infancy. It seemed to N.K. that proteins might be the most suitable for hereditary molecules. The connection of amino acids through —NH—COOH— bonds into polymer structures made it possible to think that it was proteins that could reach gigantic lengths; as an example, Koltsov cited a pattern of fibroin proteins (Fig. 2).

He discussed the possibility of constructing hereditary molecules from nucleic acids, but rejected this proposal, since Phoebus Levene published at that time the tetranucleotide theory of the structure of DNA, according to which four nucleotides (AGTTs) were monotonically repeated in the molecule. Koltsov concluded that in this case nucleic acids cannot carry genetic records, as they are "too primitive" and do not satisfy "linguistic requirements". The tetranucleotide theory was later refuted.

On the whole, N. K.'s ideas about hereditary molecules contained the following provisions.

1. Chromosomes contain giant molecules that carry genetic records.
2. Genes are segments of hereditary molecules.
3. Each hereditary molecule contains two strands.
4. Each thread carries identical sequences of records, and because of this they are complementary.
5. As a result chemical changes gene mutations occur in hereditary molecules.
6. Single molecules are used as seeds (matrices) for the synthesis of molecules with identical sequences (records) on them, which ensures the continuity of the structure of the genetic material in generations.

In 1928 Koltsov published an article in German with further elaboration of the model, in 1935 and 1936 two in Russian, and a more detailed description was given in his French book in 1939.

The Koltsov hypothesis attracted the attention of specialists. K. Mayer and G. Mark (one of the founders of polymer chemistry) gave a prominent place to Koltsov's ideas in their 1930 book. Herman Staudinger (who received the Nobel Prize in 1953 for the development of macromolecular chemistry) repeatedly mentioned Koltsov's ideas. In 1934, Dorothy Urinch published an article in nature, in which she considered ideas similar to those of Koltsov.

The American geneticist Milislav Demerets (James Watson's predecessor as director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) sent a letter to Koltsov on August 27, 1934, which I found in the archives of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. In it he wrote: “Your idea that a whole chromosome is a big organic molecule and that genes are only radicals of this molecule, very interesting ... In a lecture that will be published soon, I discuss your assumption ”. But Demerets rejected the central part of Koltsov's hypothesis that genes are segments of a giant hereditary molecule. He preferred to think that genes must exist as individual structures: “I doubt, however, that the experimental evidence that suggests that genes have a significant degree of individuality is comparable to your view. It is known that genes can be transferred from one homologous chromosome to another by crossing over, that their position within the chromosome can be changed by inversion, and that their position in the chromosome complex can be changed by translocation. It is also known that all these changes do not affect the involved genes themselves..

However, in 1946, Joshua Lederberg discovered that genes, as parts of one giant molecule, undergo recombination, that is, they can be transferred from one site to another place in the same molecule. In 1963, G. L. K. Whitehouse developed a structural theory for the recombination of DNA molecules. Thus, Koltsov's pioneering anticipations were fully confirmed.

In the book What is Life? Erwin Schrödinger agreed with the thesis that giant hereditary molecules exist (without mentioning Koltsov's name) and that they can be protein molecules. However, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, to whom Schrödinger attributed this explanation, restored the historical importance of Koltsov's predictions in a review of Schrödinger's book in Nature. Haldane pointed out that it was Nikolai Konstantinovich who was the first to “introduced… the idea… that the chromosome is a gigantic molecule… having the properties of a crystal, including the ability to reproduce itself and thus a highly complex structure that carries „encoded record“ for the development of the organism.
Rice. 3. Drawing by N.K. Koltsov showing the structure of multistranded polytene chromosomes found in the salivary glands of Diptera. First published in 1934 in the journal Science In 1934, Koltsov made another important discovery: T. S. Paynter discovered huge chromosomes in the salivary glands of dipterous insects, and N. K. explained the mechanism of their occurrence: in the course of multiple doublings of hereditary molecules they do not disperse into daughter cells, and the chromosomes thicken (Fig. 3).

A Russian biologist called such chromosomes polytene (multi-stranded), this term became stronger and still exists in science. At the same time, the length of the chromosomes does not increase, but the thickness, due to the nondisjunction of the newly formed hereditary molecules, increases, reaching a gigantic size. Koltsov described this mechanism in an article published in the American journal Science in the same year. He wrote: “I have seen hundreds of preparations of the salivary glands of various Diptera obtained in the genetic and cytological departments of my Institute of Experimental Biology. Professor H. J. Möller of the University of Texas also showed me a series of very good Drosophila preparations that had various unusual shapes of X chromosomes.”

The scientist had another area of ​​interest. At the beginning of the century, he became acquainted with the first works on the inheritance of mental abilities in humans and wanted to establish a department of human genetics at his institute. In 1920, N. K. Koltsov was elected chairman of the Russian Eugenic Society and remained so until 1929, when, on his initiative, the society ceased its work. Since 1922, he became the editor (since 1924 - co-editor) of the Russian Eugenic Journal, in which he published his speech "Improving the Human Breed", delivered on October 20, 1921 at the annual meeting of the Russian Eugenic Society, and the study "Pedigrees of our nominees" .

Later, the politicking ideologists of Stalinism used Koltsov's interest in human genetics against him, calling this trend misanthropy, even fascism. However, human genetics is intensively developing, and new ones are being developed on its basis. effective methods treatment of diseases.

The contribution of Nikolai Konstantinovich to the development of Russian science as a whole would have been incompletely outlined if his humanitarian activities had remained in the shadow. He did a lot not only for women's education in Russia. He more than once stood up for the honor and dignity of Russian scientists who were unjustly offended, slandered, and arrested. And in Soviet times, he did not change his principles.

Koltsov wrote brightly and a lot. To this day, the journal "Nature" plays an important role in the dissemination of scientific knowledge, of which he was editor-in-chief from 1912 to 1930; as an application, he founded the series "Classics of Natural Science". Since 1916, Koltsov edited the Proceedings of the Biological Laboratory, then organized the journals Izvestiya Experimental Biology (1921), Successes in Experimental Biology (began to appear in 1922), Biological Journal and a number of other publications.

Koltsov's independent position not only in science, but also in social activities irritated the authorities. The first to launch vicious attacks on N.K. were figures from the Society of Marxist Biologists in March 1931. Koltsov was especially viciously publicly attacked after a discussion about genetics and selection in December 1936. Nikolai Konstantinovich behaved implacably towards the Lysenkoites, who attacked genetics. Understanding what the organizers of the discussion were getting at, after the closing of the session, in January 1937, he sent a letter to the President of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (copies - to the heads of departments of the Central Committee: Agriculture- to Ya. A. Yakovlev, science - to K. Ya. Bauman, press and publishing houses - to B. M. Tal), in which he explicitly stated that to organize such discussion means patronizing liars and demagogues, and this will not bring any benefit to either science or the country.

He pointed out the unacceptable situation with the teaching of genetics in universities, predicting what a decrease in the level of knowledge in the Land of Soviets would lead to, and then declared sedition, which was generally unthinkable under Soviet conditions, saying in plain text that the Pravda newspaper printed lies about speeches at the session: “Newspapers printed biased and often completely illiterate reports about the sessions of the session. What is worth, for example, a report in „Pravda“ dated December 27 ... How would you call this „the truth“? Will it remain undeniable? We need to correct the mistakes that have been made. Indeed, from the resulting defeat of genetics, perhaps more than one graduate of agronomists will suffer ... First of all, history will ask us why we did not protest against an unworthy for Soviet Union attacks on science... Ignorance in the next issues of agronomists will cost the country millions of tons of bread. But we love our country no less than party Bolsheviks and are proud of the successes of social construction. That is why I do not want and cannot be silent.

Demands to stop Koltsov and reject his criticism were made on March 26-29 and April 1, 1937 at meetings of the activists of the Presidium of VASKhNIL. But N.K. was not frightened and, having listened to repeated accusations against him, asked for the floor and without hesitation rejected unfair attacks, repeating that “The newspapers misreported the substance of the discussion that was taking place. From them it is impossible to form a clear idea of ​​what was said at the session..

At the end of the meetings at VASKhNIL, he concluded his speech as follows: “I do not renounce what I said and wrote, and I will not renounce, and you will not intimidate me with any threats. You can deprive me of the title of academician, but I'm not afraid, I'm not timid. I conclude with the words of Alexei Tolstoy, who wrote them on an occasion very close to this occasion, - in response to the censor who tried to ban the printing of Darwin's book:

Throw, comrade, intimidation,
Science is not timid.
Don't stop her flow
No traffic jam!.

A week and a half later, an article by Ya. A. Yakovlev was published, in which, in harsh terms, genetics was called fascist, and Koltsov - "a fascist obscurantist ... trying to turn genetics into an instrument of reactionary political struggle", and it is said that genetics "for their own political purposes" supposedly "carry out fascist use „laws“ this science".

These attacks were not random. The statements of geneticists that the external environment can change heredity only by inducing mutations in hereditary records were categorically at odds with Stalin's views. Rarely occurring mutations could not satisfy him, since he was convinced that the correct - Stalinist - education would change the heredity of the entire Soviet people and subsequent generations would behave according to his, Stalinist, standards, that it was necessary to purposefully change the conditions for growing plants and animals and create high-speed rates of plant varieties and animal breeds. And here these geneticists are talking about the conservatism of heredity and the notorious genes, which do not exist at all.

In 1938, the election of the best scientists by members of the USSR Academy of Sciences was announced. In January 1939, in Pravda, A. N. Bakh, B. A. Keller, and six young scientists who joined them made a statement that Koltsov and L. S. Berg, an outstanding zoogeographer, could not be elected academicians. The letter was titled: "Pseudo-scientists have no place in the Academy of Sciences." After such an article, neither Koltsov nor Berg became an academician (the latter was elected in 1946), and the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences appointed a special commission to deal with cases at the Koltsov Institute.

Members of the commission, including Lysenko, began to run into the institute and talked with the staff. In the end, a general meeting of the institute staff was scheduled, at which the commission was going to listen to the staff and read out their decision. The scientists of the institute, however, proved to be loyal to their director, and almost no one said a word of condemnation against him. Only two opposed Koltsov: N.P. Dubinin, head of the genetics department of the institute, who was rushing to the director’s chair, and a person from the outside, who had the same goals, Kh.S. Koshtoyants (animal physiologist, who preferred to advance along the party-social line).

The meeting gave its full support to Koltsov, which was completely amazing fact for those days: according to the existing rules of the game, the collective should have condemned N.K., but there were no traitors and weak-minded people in it. And if the team did not do this, then the NKVD had no formal grounds to bring Koltsov to criminal liability for sabotage at that moment. Nikolai Konstantinovich himself, and this time not retreating from his courageous position, spoke at the meeting calmly and without trembling in his voice said what in those days no one dared to speak in such situations.

He did not agree with any of the accusations, pleaded not guilty to anything and did not repent: "I've been wrong twice in my life," he said. - Once, due to my youth and inexperience, I incorrectly identified one spider. Another time, the same story came out with another representative of invertebrates. Until the age of 14, I believed in God, and then I realized that there is no God, and I began to treat religious prejudices, like every competent biologist. But can I say that I was wrong before the age of 14? This was my life, my road, and I will not renounce myself.

On April 16, 1939, the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences removed Koltsov from the post of director of the institute, but left him as head of the laboratory.

At the end of November 1940, Koltsov and his wife went to Leningrad for scientific conference. Suddenly, without any symptoms that would have appeared before, he had a myocardial infarction, and three days later, on December 2, he died in a hotel.

His wife wrote: “Now the big, beautiful, whole life is over. During his illness, one night, he clearly told me: “How I wished that everyone would wake up, that everyone would wake up.” Even on the day of the seizure, he worked hard in the library and was happy. We talked to him that we are “happy, happy, happy.”

With this note, Koltsov's wife also completed her stay on earth. Without a husband, she did not see the point in existence and on the same day she ended her life. Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR I. B. Zbarsky in the book “Object No. 1” stated that Koltsov was apparently poisoned by the Chekists with heart poison sprinkled in a sandwich.

Three quarters of a century after the death of N. K. Koltsov, scientists came to his principle of the cytoskeleton for the second time. For their work on the structure of cells, Christian de Duve, Albert Claude and Georg Palade were awarded in 1974 Nobel Prize. The idea of ​​the double structure of hereditary molecules was proposed by N. K. a quarter of a century earlier than James Watson and Francis Crick's DNA double helix model, which won the Nobel Prize in 1962 (and although Watson assured me several times in 1988-2000 that he and Crick did not knew about the Koltsov model, I have doubts about this).

Artur Kornberg's ideas about the mechanisms of DNA copying in the process of duplication (replication) and his isolation of DNA polymerase 1, which coincided with Koltsov's, were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1959. Russia lost its priority in science in these areas precisely because the communists interfered with Koltsov's work, forbade him to contact the West during his lifetime, and crossed out his name in their country after his sudden death.

But the nature of the vacuum does not tolerate. Without continuing the work of the Koltsov school, without the appearance of articles in foreign literature, in which the researchers would mention the name of the author of the original ideas, not only the ideas, but also his name remained known only to historians of biology.

There is still no monument to Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov in Moscow.

American biophysicist and historian of science, Dr. physical and mathematical sciences,
Honorary Professor of Moscow State University, Kazan and Rostov Universities

Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov

Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov (July 3 (15), 1872, Moscow - December 2, 1940, Leningrad) - an outstanding Russian biologist, author of the idea of ​​matrix synthesis.

Koltsov was a "merchant's son", born in Moscow in the family of an accountant of a large fur firm. He brilliantly graduated from the Moscow gymnasium. In 1890 he entered the natural department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University, where he specialized in comparative anatomy and comparative embryology. Koltsov's supervisor during this period was the head of the school of Russian zoologists M.A. Menzbier.

In 1895, Menzbier recommended that Koltsov leave the university after graduation "to prepare for a professorship." Since 1899, Koltsov has been a Privatdozent at Moscow University. After three years of studies and the successful completion of six master's exams, Koltsov was sent abroad for two years. He worked in laboratories in Germany and at marine biological stations in Italy. The collected material served as the basis for the master's thesis, which Koltsov defended in 1901. Koltsov's works on cell biophysics and, especially, on the factors that determine the shape of a cell, have become classics and are included in textbooks.

Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1925; Petersburg Academy of Sciences - since 1916, Russian Academy Sciences - since 1917), Academician of VASKhNIL (1935).

In 1920, Koltsov was considered as one of the defendants in the Tactical Center case.

And he was sentenced by the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal among the nineteen accused to be shot, but the execution was replaced, according to some sources, with a suspended prison sentence for five years, according to others - to a concentration camp until the end of the civil war.

He was buried at the Vvedensky cemetery in Moscow.

Scientific activity

He showed, mainly on the spermatozoa of decapod crustaceans, the shaping significance of cell "skeletons" (Koltsov's principle), the effect of ionic series on the reactions of contractile and pigment cells, and physical and chemical effects on the activation of unfertilized eggs for development. He was the first to develop the hypothesis of the molecular structure and matrix reproduction of chromosomes (“hereditary molecules”), which anticipated the main fundamental provisions of modern molecular biology and genetics (1928).

Lobashev Mikhail Efimovich

Lobashev Mikhail Eimovich (1907-1971) - Soviet geneticist and physiologist, professor at Leningrad State University (1953), head of the Department of Genetics and Breeding at Leningrad State University (since 1957). The main works on the physiology of mutation processes - (Latin mutatio - change) - persistent (that is, one that can be inherited by the descendants of a given cell or organism) change in the genotype that occurs under the influence of external or internal environment. The process of mutations is called mutagenesis.

Reasons for mutations:

Mutations are divided into spontaneous and induced. Spontaneous mutations occur spontaneously throughout the life of an organism under normal conditions. environment with a frequency of about 10? 9 -- 10 ? 12 per nucleotide per cell generation.

Induced mutations are called heritable changes in the genome resulting from certain mutagenic effects in artificial (experimental) conditions or under adverse environmental influences.

Mutations appear constantly in the course of processes occurring in a living cell. The main processes leading to the occurrence of mutations are DNA replication, damage to DNA repair, and genetic recombination.

Recombination is the process of exchanging genetic material by breaking and joining different molecules. Recombination occurs in the repair of double-strand breaks in DNA and to continue replication in the event of a stoppage of the replication fork in eukaryotes, bacteria, and archaea. Viruses can recombine between the RNA molecules of their genomes.

Recombination in eukaryotes usually occurs during crossing over during meiosis, in particular during the formation of spermatozoa and eggs in animals. Recombination, along with DNA replication, RNA transcription, and protein translation, is one of the fundamental processes that emerged early in the evolutionary process. genetics of behavior, physiology of higher nervous activity and the formation of adaptive reactions in the ontogenesis of animals.