Gerontology and the geniuses of Russian science

The section “Problems of the Evolution of Matter” of the Moscow Society of Naturalists held a meeting dedicated to the memory of the Honorary Member of the Moscow Society of Naturalists Alexei Matveyevich Olovnikov (1936 – 2022).

The meeting was organized by Sergei Bagotsky, known for his fundamental work “History of Science”.

The event took place on Friday, January 13, 2023 in a historical place – the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University on Bolshaya Nikitskaya. I remember well what passions were running high here when, at a certain moment in history, biology was once again reborn from a caterpillar into a butterfly. This has happened to our science many times. The memory of these discussions hid in the silence of the MOIP offices under the third hall of the Zoological Museum and the Large Zoological Auditorium on the second floor.

The history is long, MOIP was established in 1805 at the Imperial Moscow University.

Irreconcilable past disputes, if anyone remembers them, in the current scientific perspective look like a caricature, like a frozen dynamics in an oil painting of a party meeting in a Neanderthal community. There were few logical contradictions, mostly ideological, and especially purely biological feelings of scientists towards each other. In fact, the contradiction has always been one in various forms. One of the authors of the double helix, Nobel laureate James Watson, with his usual sarcasm, said to a colleague who annoyed him with her obstinacy, “How important complexity is for biology.”

The stereotype about the complexity of biology was broken by the charismatic generator of ideas Timofeev-Resovsky and naturally became the originator of a new natural science in an absolutely accurate format. The triumph was short-lived, but it was marked by a bunch of Nobel Prizes not for politics, but for the cause.

Science in Russia makes its way through the layers of asphalt with grass. But in general, her condition needs resuscitation. It’s time to start the pathologist to leave for posterity a description of what it was all about. Medieval complexity multiplied by the national characteristics of the ruling Anglo-Saxons. Scientific dissidents like Giordano Bruno are not burned, they are simply driven insane so that their unfortunate appearance serves as an edification.

The whole bundle of current contradictions fully affected the MOIP event, which lasted only two hours. It was a gathering of real Russian geniuses with a full range of recognized and unrecognized merits. An obligatory marker of genius is the presence of works published in the form of monographs.

Knowledge of the great names of Russian science is obligatory, but not complete. For example, Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky) was ahead of Norbert Wiener. And the nomogenesis of Lev Berg is obviously dearer to the heart of a Russian scientist in comparison with the “Darwin’s Theory”.

Aleksey Matveyevich Olovnikov firmly stood in the line of the great. The participants of the event in his memory agreed that it was a man who influenced the development of the world.

Olovnikov’s scientific activity fell on the era of the revival of complexity. I remember him well. It was a strange person out of this world. He defiantly did not fit into the well-known algorithms of status recognition “You may not be a scientist, but you must be a candidate.”

At the same time, Olovnikov was not white and fluffy. I witnessed how he quarreled with the aristocratic Arshavsky about the biogenetic law and seriously offended.

There were whole flocks of such “white crows” in Russian science. Their fate is different. Vadim Popov published the best monograph on genomics and turned into the character of the great and forgotten science fiction writer Stanislav Lem. Yuri Tchaikovsky became the last Russian evolutionist. Unlike Darwin, he has a theory and it works. Simon Shnol remained a living monument in refutation of the stereotype that the Soviet government is to blame for all the troubles of science. He tried to emigrate to the USA and returned to Russia with pleasure through the White Sea Biological Station. Mikhail Golubovsky, during the reign of the new Lysenko, in the person of Dubinin, dashed off a brilliant pamphlet about him, threw the genetic dictator off the pedestal, returned face and humor to domestic genetics. Lives in the USA. Vigen Geodakyan, during his lifetime, fired theories like from a Katyusha multiple launch rocket launcher. Status scientists were afraid of him and therefore did not like him. Among the people of his theory enjoyed fantastic popularity. The same alignment came out with Lev Gumilyov. And there was also the son of a philosopher, the unrecognized Sergey Gershenzon, he made all the discoveries in genetics before anyone else. He died in Kyiv at the end of the century.

So Olovnikov, with all his unusualness, is far from alone. I got into good company.

The name of Alexei Olovnikov is associated in memory with the idea of ​​telomere shortening as the cause of cell death and then, as a result of this, aging of the body.

Telomeres are the caps at the ends of chromosomes. As part of the cell cycle between mitoses, the DNA of chromosomes is replicated, and each cell after division receives a complete set. Olovnikov was the first to come up with the idea of ​​telomere underreplication.

Olovnikov drew attention to telomeres, and their behavior revealed some interesting mysteries. Indeed, in spermatozoa, telomeres are longer. On the other hand, some great apes have longer telomeres than humans, and monkeys live shorter lives.

The chairman of the gerontology section of the MOIP, geriatrician Valery Novoselov, became dominant among the speakers at the evolution section. He took over the rights of the host, Bagotsky did not mind.

Novoselov was literally torn between accuracy for the Russian audience and complexity, without which the Western media would not be accepted. You can understand, Novoselov is a promoted and media figure.

Novoselov knows a lot, and his arguments in the natural science segment are more than consistent.

It was Novoselov who said that Olovnikov influenced humanity. In total there are more than three hundred theories of aging. Four are mainly discussed, and two of them belong to Olovnikov.

Olovnikov revealed the nature of the phenomenon of Leonard Hayflick, a professor at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, who showed that the population of human embryonic fibroblasts in cell culture divides from 40 to 60 times. Then the aging phase begins.

Under the pressure of arguments, Olovnikov abandoned the telomeric theory of aging; in our body, most cells are post-mitotic. That is, they do not divide and, accordingly, telomeres in them do not shorten.

I have never been able to figure out what Olovnikov’s alternative theory of aging is. Novoselov said it was too difficult.

The scientist did not agree with the fact that people, like smartphones, have a mechanism of programmed aging. For smartphones, the selfish interest of manufacturers is visible: you buy it and quickly go to the landfill. Run for a new one with your money.

It is terrible to think that people are being produced in order to be sent to the cemetery as soon as possible. Although the events of the current history confirm the wild idea.

According to Novoselov, there is a development program. And if there was a program of planned death, then we saw failures in it.

The trick is that such a failure is known to everyone. The terrible disease of carcinogenesis is precisely the same failure in the aging program. This eternal life for the sake of immortality loses HCH program functions of the genome – development and growth, morphogenesis and specialization, DNA repair and elimination of cancer cells distraught from freedom. They will live as long as they are fed by an external resource for them.

The highest stage in the evolution of parasitism. It looks like monsters in Yulia Latynina’s novel “Inhuman”.

And by the way, the proliferation of carcinogenic cells is not accompanied by underreplication of telomeres. They are fine with telomeres.

Eternal life has not yet been found in the wild. In relative terms, the longest-lived mammal is the naked mole rat of Southeast Africa. This unattractive rodent ten centimeters long is unusual in every respect. Cold-blooded. Insensitive to pain. Doesn’t get cancer. Lives in colonies replenished by the only female queen in the colony in clear inbreeding. She gives birth up to five times a year, 12-27 cubs with the number of nipples 11-12. The cubs are fed by ordinary members of the colony, collecting food in dug tunnels.

The life expectancy of a naked mole rat is up to 31 years, which in human terms is eight hundred years. It is clear that the MOIP gerontologists could not but recall this strange animal, and did so with disdainful doubt. Numerous studies by many scientists have turned the naked mole rat into a fashionable object that, apart from grants to the researcher, brings nothing. In this he looks like Bigfoot. Scientists don’t care, as long as they get paid.

And a person has a group of various rare defects that can turn on the aging program from early childhood. It’s called progeria.

I did not receive direct intelligible answers to my questions about the aging program, about the reasons for extending life in zero gravity in orbit, why stress generates vitality in survivors and rejuvenates the body.

Geniuses, what can you take from them. They did not prepare for the event, they spoke impromptu and mainly about their scientific merits to humanity. I did not understand the essence of the great discoveries. I’m not a genius.

As far as I know, both births and deaths do not occur with a monotonous frequency, but in clusters at intervals. Friday the 13th fell on a tough day out of a cluster of physical turbulence. Several well-known politicians have died. It’s not that they are old and sick, but the strange solidarity of their departure.

As they say, all the great people of antiquity have died, so something is unwell for me. I have felt these days since childhood. The first memorable was the day of the announced death of Stalin.

Gerontology has become popular due to the increase in life expectancy. People do not die by themselves, but as a result of diseases that can be partially prevented by prevention, pre-hospital measures and effective patient routing.

I really hope that the attack on doctors will end, and they will be able to save people without fear of falling under a criminal law. The first signs have already appeared.

The participants in the discussion at MOIP were interested in something else: conveying their own wisdom to contemporaries. Sergei Bagotsky, whose daughter Masha is a wonderful dog handler of the best domestic breed “East European Shepherd”, spoke about this. Masha in this matter is wiser than both chambers of the Federal Assembly.

The participants agreed that the death of a gerontologist is a defeat for gerontology. Gerontologists should set an example for mere mortals.

And here again the frantic geriatrician Valery Novoselov cut the truth in the eye. You can live long, but the quality of life is reduced.

Man is a unique animal in his own way. Ordinary organisms with a change in the phases of the life cycle do not live so long after the completion of reproduction.

Another not a genius, but simply an effective and therefore well-known researcher at the Institute of Molecular Genetics, Svetlana Limborskaya, spoke out of the box for the situation. She regretted that the plans to meet and discuss did not materialize, Olovnikov died on December 6, 2022.

The geniuses dragged on unimaginably. Limborska suddenly hurried somewhere. She said that their Institute of Molecular Genetics, unexpectedly for them, was attached to the Kurchatov Center. Although there is no surprise here, Mikhail Kovalchuk long ago decided the fate of this Institute behind Kurchatov’s head and the fate of all genetics.

Again it turned out, as in a poem by Yuri Levitansky: “They gathered hastily – Life passed – as it was not. We didn’t talk.”

Wikipedia reports that Alexey Matveevich Olovnikov was born on October 10, 1936 in Vladivostok, died on December 6, 2022 in Moscow. Theoretical biologist, specialist in the field of biology of aging, theoretical molecular and cellular biology, leading researcher at the Institute of Biochemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, candidate of biological sciences, laureate of the Demidov Prize in 2009.

To complete, I will quote from the same Wikipedia article about Aleksey Matveyevich Olovnikov, briefly summarizing all the content that sounded in an hour and a half at MOIP:

“In 1985, Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn (Nobel Prize 2009) identified telomerase in cells, and in 1998, using telomerase, researchers managed to “rejuvenate” cell culture.

Professor Leonard Hayflick argued in this connection that “Olovnikov’s astute assumption has received experimental confirmation.”

Olovnikov’s former supervisor, Academician Vladimir Skulachev, who, together with other specialists, nominated Olovnikov for the Nobel Prize in 2009, stated in this regard in an interview with RIA Novosti:

“This is very unfair, I believe, since he predicted this phenomenon. It is generally accepted in the world that he expressed this idea, they (the laureates) only confirmed it. But this is the business of the Nobel Committee, of course.”

End of quote.

Lev MOSKOVKIN.