Drops of Skulachev – a medicine for the immortality of the soul

On Wednesday, March 29, the historian of science Sergei Bagotsky held a meeting of the section “Problems of the Evolution of Matter” of the Moscow Society of Nature Testers in room 11 of the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University, dedicated to the memory of the outstanding biochemist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Petrovich Skulachev (1935 – 2023).

According to Skulachev himself, he wanted to save humanity from the humiliating state of decrepitude at the end of life.

Immortality was provided to the scientist by the drug vizomitin, eye drops based on mitochondrial antioxidants – Skulachev’s Ions. Recommended for dry eye syndrome.

The Makropulos remedy failed, but not bad either. The mechanism of action follows from the long-term research of Skulachev’s laboratory on bioenergetics.

Sergei Ostroumov, a research participant, made the keynote speech. Then Sergei Bagotsky corrected inaccuracies for a long time, when his friend and colleague in the reconstruction of scientific history had already retired.

It seems to me that this is a strange type of scientist: he is always in a hurry, although there is nowhere to hurry and there is no need, as if he is afraid of his own shadow. Tells colorfully and figuratively. Not because he is a good speaker, he takes the listener by the logic of his own original spill. What does not fit into it – does not say anything, and gets angry in response to questions.

Ostroumov’s work in Skulachev’s laboratory began on Monday with a trip with a bucket to a meat-packing plant. An ordinary scientist in a meat-packing plant gets depressed from the roar of bulls. On the conveyor – organs that can be used for a variety of purposes – blood, eyes, thymus. For example, for research or the manufacture of drugs.

Ostroumov was supposed to catch bull hearts and throw them into a bucket of ice. In the laboratory, hearts were homogenized in blenders and mitochondria were isolated from them.

Mitochondria is an organelle of a eukaryotic cell that is in charge of the energy metabolism of the entire multicellular organism. Mitochondria originated from a bacterium and partially retained its own genome. Its role is to provide the respiratory redox chain. At the output, the oxidative energy of the oxygen molecule is gradually exchanged for small energy accumulators in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules by attaching a third phosphate to the adenosine diphosphate molecule.

The energy of ATP is used remotely for the work of muscle fibers and, in general, any microtubules, wherever it is necessary to apply force and cause movement, that is, to convert potential energy into work. For example, when chromosomes separate before cell division.

The work of Skulachev’s laboratory was to find a mediator between the release of energy and its accumulation.

Ostroumov stressed that biochemists are not taught physics in the West, so they were looking for a substance to play the role of an intermediary. Well, they didn’t find it.

In Russia, teaching physics and mathematics is mandatory for any biological education.

Skulachev’s laboratory discovered the effect of a capacitor with different charges on both sides of the mitochondrial membrane, negative inside and positive outside.

Thus, the intermediary accumulator of energy is not matter, but the electric field. In principle, its energy can be expended without the formation of ATP, but locally.

For two weeks, Skulachev’s laboratory was in euphoria. The results were included in several dissertations, including those of Ostroumov. If there is a capacitor in a living cell, it is natural to assume that there may be a transformer. Well, at least the inductor. When electric charges move, the electric field is converted into a magnetic field.

Ostroumov supported the idea, but emphasized that it is more difficult to catch a magnetic field in microvolumes than an electric one.

With Skulachev there was a typical story in its strangeness. Briton Peter Mitchell received the Nobel Prize. According to Ostroumov, without the support of Skulachev from Russia, the award would not have found a hero in Britain. There they hung all the dogs on him. They were looking for a substance, but it turned out to be a field.

But in this case, the prize should be divided into two, Ostroumov believes.

Mitchell fell ill, refused university posts and titles, bought a house in the country and there, in solitude, set up a small laboratory. Skulachev was away, and he and Mitchell talked quite a lot. Which, in general, contributed to Mitchell’s return to status science.

According to Wikipedia, Peter Mitchell proposed the chemiosmotic hypothesis in 1961. The theory suggests that most ATP synthesis in respiring cells is due to an electrochemical gradient across the inner membranes of mitochondria, generated using the energy of oxygen released in redox reactions with cytochrome, NADH and FADH2, resulting from the breakdown of organic molecules such as glucose.

To be honest, teaching physics was easier. Cellular processes include many diverse cycles with a significant contribution of self-organization at all stages. Learning the terminology alone is almost a feat, but it is not enough for understanding. At the same time, the immunity of warm-blooded animals or the neurogenesis of animals with GND includes reproducible genetic instability. In general, it is much more difficult to understand compared to bioenergetics or photosynthesis.

Skulachev actually prevented Mitchell’s premature aging and, towards the end of his own life, became interested in the problem of aging as such. The idea was simple. The intermediate products of the redox chain are extremely aggressive chemically. If you do not limit their concentration, they are toxic. Engaged in the fight against oxidative crime in the cell are special police officers called antioxidants.

The idea of ​​protecting the body from aging and disease with oxidation inhibitors has gained popularity. A real hunt unfolded for antioxidants, sometimes resulting in the death of the most successful researcher.

The prokaryotic flora of the White Sea has become an inexhaustible source of antioxidants.

Describing Skulachev as a person, Ostroumov, among other things, noted that he graduated from the Department of Biochemistry. Back then, it was mostly girls who studied at the Faculty of Biology. There were only four boys at the Department of Biochemistry, and all of them became academicians – Vladimir Gvozdev, Sergey Shestakov, Lev Kiselev and Skulachev.

I personally know all four in the role of science integrators. Moreover, two, Gvozdev and Shestakov, directly influenced my fate in approximately the same vein as Skulachev determined the revival of Mitchell.

Vladimir Gvozdev should be awarded the honorary title of twice Nobel Prize non-winner for transposable elements of the genome and the regulatory role of short RNAs.

According to Bagotsky, Skulachev possessed a rare combination of three talents – the ability to listen, to highlight the essential that the person himself did not formulate in his conclusions, and to organize the work of the laboratory.

When the classics were young, there were quite a lot of such integrators of science. A classic example is Nikolai Vavilov.

Unfortunately, the aggressive scientific community is under the yoke of its own mental emanations. For example, the absolutely open and unsophisticated patriarch of science Timofeev-Resovsky is considered a complex and incomprehensible person. If he worked during fascism in Berlin-Buch, inevitably a spy or, at worst, an intelligence officer. It wasn’t. I know from direct sources what he did there and how it ended.

Or Ivan Glushchenko with his halo of terry obscurantist Lysenko spill. And this was not the case, Glushchenko was in a state of hard counter with Lysenko during his power. He collected facts about genetic instability. The phenomenon later gained recognition thanks to the monograph by Roman Khesin-Lurie “Genome Impermanence”.

All these individuals have played their roles as integrators of science.

Speaker Ostroumov ran away home long ago, and we all argued in the deserted zoo museum among mammoths about the fate of Russian science and the role of specific scientists. Oddly enough, we came to a common concept. This rarely happens in a highly educated environment.

Lev Moskovkin.

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