The legendary bio-school is gaining momentum
The revival of "Mozzhinka"
Marina Astvatsaturyan, "Search" No. 49-2014
The VI International School of Young Scientists in Molecular Genetics "Genomics and Systems Biology" was held at the end of November at the Zvenigorodsky Boarding House of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The name of one of the brightest events in the life of the now disintegrated scientific community of the disintegrated country was given by the village of Mozzhinka near Zvenigorod near Moscow. From 1965 to 1985, young geneticists not only from both capitals, but also from the Union republics came here every year for one or two weeks. In the 1960s, with the rapid growth of biological research, scientists needed new forms of communication for the direct exchange of information. This is how the concept of "School of Young Scientists" arose. There were several schools, and they had specializations: the school of molecular biology, led by V.A. Engelhardt, on the genetics of microorganisms, led by S.I. Alikhanyan, and on molecular genetics. The latter gained the greatest popularity, the organization of which eventually completely passed to Roman Khesin, an employee of the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. "At that time, the appearance of schools with such topics was a sensation, in a sense it was a challenge to the prevailing ideological attitudes at that time. It took a lot of courage, not just energy, to conduct such a school," Professor Mark Mokulsky, who headed the Institute of Molecular Genetics (IMG AN) from 1978 to 1988, said in a comment to Search.
"This school was our main academy," Andrei Gudkov, a biologist well known in the world for his work on the study of molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis, senior vice president for Basic Research at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, said at the beginning of his lecture.
This year, participants of the very first schools held by the IMG of the Academy of Sciences were present at the Mozzhinka at the time when the Zvenigorodsky boarding house had not yet been built and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna was the base for the school. "Then, almost 50 years ago, genetics was reviving in the country, and we were in a hurry to get the scientific results in the field of molecular genetics that had already been obtained in the world. Physicists helped us with this," says Inga Arman, a leading researcher at the REC IMG RAS. "The Institute of Molecular Genetics, where I work, is a true brainchild of the Institute of Atomic Energy. I was assigned there in 1959 after a radiobiological department was organized there to study the effects of radiation on humans. At that time, they didn't even know what was damaged by radioactive radiation – protein and peptide structures or unique structures discovered by Watson and Crick," she recalls.
"There was a very large representation of physicists themselves in Dubna. And, somewhat distracting from the main topic, I remembered now that we lived in a hotel, respectively, we had breakfast, lunch and dinner in the hotel restaurant, where music always played after dinner, and young Sergei Kapitsa liked to do several waltz rounds with young researchers in the field of molecular biology," Arman says.
In Mozzhinka, school participants first lived in academic dachas, which were empty in winter. The problem of accommodating a large number of lecturers and students of the increasingly popular school was solved by itself when an academic boarding house with a large and comfortable lecture hall was built.
The desire of scientists of different generations to get to the school of molecular genetics was primarily due to the high level of reports and the novelty of the presented works. "Outstanding scientists Vladimir Alexandrov and Semyon Bresler came from Leningrad, whose students made good reports," Inga Arman continues her memoirs, who also noted Hesin's exactingness to the form of reports submitted by IMG staff. "The report plan was discussed in advance at a meeting of the organizing committee of the school, but each of the institute's speakers had to make their report on at an internal seminar, after which he was invited to Roman Beniaminovich's office, where he very calmly and carefully recommended adding something, and maybe not proclaiming something. As a result, the reports themselves have always been very rich, but at the same time quite understandable for people of related biological specialties."
The passing of Roman Hesin coincided with the beginning of perestroika, the work of schools stopped for a while, which, according to Arman, "was very painfully perceived by the entire scientific community – both young people and quite respectable scientists."
Mozzhinka was revived in 2004 by enthusiasts of IMG RAS. The school was financially supported, in particular, by the charitable foundation "The Future of Molecular Genetics", which was headed by Kakha Bendukidze, a well-known businessman, and in the past a graduate student of Hesina. The memory of Kakha Bendukidze, who died in mid-November of this year, was honored with a minute of silence at the opening of the current school, and photos of him during his years at IMG appeared in the reports of the participants.
This year Mozzhinka gathered 20 lecturers, among whom were not only famous Russian scientists, such as Konstantin Anokhin (Kurchatov Institute), Vladimir Kovalzon (Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences) and Fazli Ataullakhanov (Hematology Research Center), but and our compatriots who are successfully working in the USA, Great Britain, Sweden and Israel.
Their listeners were 120 young researchers from different regions of Russia, as well as from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Finland. As it was decades ago, for graduate students and young applicants, a trip to the school in Mozzhinka is a reward, because the revived school continues the traditions of the "Khesin" schools and gives its listeners the opportunity to get acquainted with the latest scientific achievements in the presentation of world–class speakers. We talked about this with an employee of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, Candidate of Biological Sciences Alexey Menzorov, who is coming to Mozzhinka for the fifth time. "I really like this school, because almost half of the reports are made by Russian-speaking scientists working abroad. They not only give a general overview of the problem, but also present their work at a very high level. This school allows you to learn new things in areas of science that I am not directly involved in, to raise the general level of your knowledge. In particular, I would like to mention the reports of Andrei Gudkov, whom I have heard not for the first time. This is an amazing lecturer who presents very interesting messages every time. Since these are works on carcinogenesis, they are important not only theoretically, but also practically. And here I see constant progress. It's amazing that such an interesting area is developing so well," said Alexey Menzorov.
"In my opinion, it turned out to be a very interesting school with an excellent program and very good lecturers. I would specifically mention the lecturers," Professor Mokulsky confirms the observation of a young colleague.
The topic "Cerebellum"-2014 "Genomics and systems Biology" continues the multidisciplinary traditions laid down by Hesin and colleagues half a century ago. No matter what news is discussed in the reports – be it superstable nucleosomes or new DNA sequencing methods, new data on the mechanisms of carcinogenesis and aging processes, methods of genomic editing and preparation of cognitive neural networks using genes and photons by chemo– and optogenetics methods, new ways of constructing evolutionary trees – in each case, researchers have the matter is with such a variety of methods and approaches that it is not possible to put them in the cell of a particular biological science. Everyone is united by the molecular level of research.
"Everything related to molecular started with biochemistry," says Fazli Ataullakhanov. "When humanity realized at the end of the XIX – beginning of the XX century that there are proteins, the first thing it learned from these proteins was their enzymatic activity. And then it seemed that all biology boils down to biochemistry," he explained. According to Ataullakhanov, "it is natural for a person to equate his understanding of an object with the object itself, but sooner or later every approach is exhausted." "All my life I have been a supporter of understanding "how it works," says the scientist. – But to do this, you need to forget about the existence of molecular biology separately, biochemistry separately, biophysics separately, physics separately, mathematics separately, and only by combining all these disciplines will it be possible to know the work of a fairly complex biological system. Fortunately for us, we live in such a wonderful time in the world when methods have become fantastic, when it has become possible to study a single molecule, be it protein or DNA, at the level of single bonds. And not only to establish its structure, but also to see how the molecule moves, moves, how everything works in detail." In his lecture at the "Cerebellum" Ataullakhanov actually presented a documentary about the molecular mechanism of cell division. Even 20 years ago, such a movie would have looked sci-fi. To study the molecules, they have to be chemically modified, and then physical measurements are made. "After measurements, everything turns out to be as complicated as in nuclear particle physics. In order to describe the process as a whole, and the results obtained would form biological representations, equations are needed, models are needed. We are now present at the birth of various names, starting with genomics and all sorts of other "omics" – proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, and people continue to produce this multitude, create bioinformatics, systems biology, and so on," says Fazli Ataullakhanov. In his opinion, this is an indicator of the crisis of names, which "will eventually be eliminated like a husk, and there will be only one science that has been named for a long time, it is called biology. There will be nothing else." "But in order to engage in today's biology seriously, it requires a huge range of methods and approaches, and knowledge, respectively. This may be the main thing that needs to be conveyed to young people. But, unfortunately, many circumstances do not allow us to do this on a sufficient scale," Ataullakhanov believes.
The continuation of the revived "Cerebellum" also depends on many circumstances. It is planned that the VII International School of Molecular Genetics will be held in November 2016. In any case, the organizers – the staff of the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences – intend to do everything possible for this.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru08.12.2014