Science in Russia: either revolution or degradation

Need an academic mutation
Galina Kostina, Expert magazine.

Maxim Frank-Kamenetsky is a professor at Boston University, a well–known expert in the field of DNA, the son of the largest Soviet physicist – one of the creators of the nuclear bomb, has been living in the United States for more than fifteen years. He left in 1993 at the invitation of this very university, who wanted to get a biophysicist known to the world scientific community, in particular, the discovery of an unusual form of DNA. A publication about this discovery appeared in Nature in 1987. Immediately after this publication, Frank-Kamenetsky was invited abroad, he was eager to attend international conferences, but he was not allowed. Resentment and anger not only at the relevant authorities, but also at the top of the Academy of Sciences, which also had a hand in this, still do not let him go. Having recently arrived in Moscow for the international forum on nanotechnology, Maxim Frank-Kamenetsky was glad to hear the brilliant reports of some Russian scientists, but remained upset by the general state of Russian science. In his opinion, slow evolutionary transformations will not give effect, Russian science needs a revolutionary revolution.

– Maxim, why were you so upset by your recent arrival in Moscow?

– I usually come to Moscow on private business, I have a son here with family, friends, but I am not drawn even to those institutions in which I once worked. I try to avoid everything connected with scientific officialdom, so as not to disturb my mental balance. But this time I was invited to a forum on nanotechnology, and I agreed, dreaming about positive changes. But when I saw and heard people who have high ranks and hold high positions in Russian science, it was as if I felt deja vu. As if nothing has changed since I left Russia to work in the USA. And from such memories, I literally start shaking.

– It looks like you've had a great time here? Even in your lecture on DNA, delivered at Moscow State University, you talked about the communist contagion and its millions of victims, building a chain to it from the breakdown in the genome of Queen Victoria – through the hemophiliac son of Nicholas II, Rasputin and the revolution.

– You probably know everyone who had to live in Russia in the twentieth century, traumatized people. We lived in a very difficult time, and we all got a lot. Undoubtedly, the anti–Semitism characteristic of that time, which I encountered quite early - back in one of the Moscow schools, still left its imprint on me. However, then I did not understand why teachers dislike me so much. I thought it was because of my hooligan behavior. But later I realized that all their Jesuit tricks were connected with my nationality. And in an open form, I encountered anti-Semitism when I entered the Physics Department. Among the applicants in my group, about half of the applicants were Jews, and none of them were accepted as students. Not one. I was accepted as a student candidate: if someone drops out after the first session, then the candidate will be enrolled. By the way, Dad stopped domestic conversations about discrimination against Jews in the country. I don't know why. Maybe it was a fear that had been ingrained for years. After all, he worked for many years in Arzamas-16, in Sarov, on nuclear projects. He worked for Stalin and hated him.

– Is your anti-communism also from your father?

- no. Dad hated Stalin, but to He was loyal to Lenin and communism as an idea, at least outwardly. Probably, there was no other way to survive. My political school jokes were always stopped at home. I think that a completely negative attitude towards the regime in the USSR has already developed in a later generation – mine.

– Was the influence of your father – the famous physicist – on your education great?

– For the first fourteen years it was rather indirect. While we were living in the closed city of Sarov, he simply had no time to deal with me. Then we moved to Moscow. After Stalin's death, his father, who did not like his military special subjects, which he was forced to do, gladly responded to Kurchatov's invitation to move to Moscow, to the Institute of Atomic Energy. I went to a Moscow school, where, unexpectedly for the whole family, it turned out that I was not pulling for the class I came to, and I could be left for the second year. The father was shocked, but asked the school to wait a little with the decision. He tackled me resolutely. Moreover, he studied with me not only physics, but also mathematics, Russian, English. And if at first I tried to resist such intensive training, then I soon got carried away. Dad was a wonderful teacher. He had a phenomenal memory and a huge, encyclopedic amount of knowledge. At the same time, he was an excellent popularizer. During his life, he wrote a dozen books and a lot of articles, and a lot of popular science. For a long time he was the deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine "Nature", actually led it.

– In general, did he manage to instill in his son a love of knowledge?

– Oh, yes. But I began to annoy the teachers even more, because I always tried to show them that I was smarter than them.

– Did someone from your father's entourage influence you?

– Not directly. Zeldovich, Tamm, Khariton, Bogolyubov, Altshuler, Zuckerman visited us. They were enlightened people, and their conversations fascinated me. I won't lie that I always listened, after all, I was a young guy.

– You barely managed to get into the Physics Department. Was studying at the university also painful?

- no. Everything was already fine there. And I had wonderful teachers. I studied according to the textbooks of Landau and Lifshitz and passed the exam to Landau himself. Another excellent teacher, Alexander Vedenov, was a student of Landau. My teacher in a broader sense is also a very famous scientist Yuri Lazurkin. I learned a lot from my friend, the outstanding physicist Alexander Dykhne. I started out as a theoretical physicist, but I became interested in biophysics very early. And in this area I was greatly influenced by the guru of molecular biophysics in In the Soviet Union – Mikhail Volkenstein. Ilya Lifshits, the brother of the textbook's co-author, and Wolkenstein had very good schools, very strong guys. Now, however, they are scattered all over the world.

– You graduated from Phys Tech, worked successfully and even made a world-class discovery. And all this was possible in our country?

– I can't say that I didn't have the opportunity to work in Moscow. First, I had a theoretical group at the Kurchatov Institute for many years, and then at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Then my boss Yuri Lazurkin reached the age of seventy, and in those days at that age it was necessary to make room. And I became the head of the department, which employed about fifteen people. In addition, I headed the Department of Molecular Biophysics at Phys.Tech. Strong students came from the department to my laboratory.

Our work on the fact that DNA does not always have the classical form of a double helix and under certain physical conditions can take another conformation – a triple helix, was originally published in 1986, but attracted attention after our publications in 1987 and 1988 in the prestigious journal Nature. With the advent of strong publications, the number of invitations to international conferences has increased. Only now it was impossible to go out on them. It was difficult to come to terms with this: after all, perestroika had begun. When I became particularly insistent, the chief security officer from the Academy of Sciences explained to me that the academy's leadership was not letting me in to spite the Americans, who had not allowed some of our "scientists in civilian clothes" to spy somewhere. It infuriated me, I remember how I yelled at the security guard and some henchmen there. These games, in fact, simply slowed down scientific progress and career for several years – mine and my employees. Such conferences, where I and many others were not allowed until the end of 1988, when Gorbachev deprived the KGB of the right to "not let in", are not just important, they are like oxygen. There you can hear literally a few words that can give a completely unexpected turn to your work.

– Is that why you left in the early nineties?

– No, in the early nineties there were no problems with travel, I began to spend about half of my time abroad. I left from In Russia, when I no longer had anyone to work with – almost all my employees went abroad.

– It seems that a powerful vacuum cleaner was working in America, which sucked out most of our scientists…

– America is like a vacuum cleaner, but it did not pump out Russian scientists specifically. There are a lot of foreigners from many countries. And they are invited not out of charity at all, but depending on the scientific value of specialists. Everything here is largely based on money. A strong scientist brings money to the place where he is hired.

– In what way?

– He brings prestige. And prestige is eventually converted into money. And in fact, there were quite a few scientists who were actually invited to the United States from Russia: for the most part, physicists were called, and only a few biologists. Basically, scientists coming to the USA were looking for positions themselves. I am one of the few who was invited to take a professorial position right away. More precisely, at first they were invited to hold a seminar at Boston University, and then they offered to stay there. And it would be simply ridiculous to refuse: it is quite obvious that success in Russia was already impossible to achieve, except by a miracle.

 – But going abroad does not automatically mean that you can succeed there.

– That's right. You find yourself in a highly competitive environment. You have to literally plow there. But it's stimulating too. If you compare, where can you succeed faster with your abilities: in Russia or in the USA, then, of course, in the USA the chances are much higher. Despite the fierce competition, you find yourself in a completely different atmosphere. Firstly, the material base allows conducting research under normal conditions. Secondly, the rich scientific environment, for which I love Boston terribly, allows you to quickly find almost any scientific partner or the opportunity to consult with someone. To order some specific research, you do not need to go far away (as scientists from Russia). Thirdly, there is a completely different moral atmosphere here, much less intrigue in the scientific environment, which subjected me to constant stress in Of Russia.

– Did you have the opportunity to study your topics in Boston?

– When a scientist is invited, of course, he has the opportunity to pursue his own topics. I received a new impetus to the development of my research while still working in In Russia, when at one of the international conferences I met a famous scientist from Copenhagen by Peter Neilson. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this outstanding man becomes a Nobel Laureate in chemistry. He created a synthetic analogue of DNA, somewhat remaking one of the main molecules of life. Instead of a sugar-phosphate backbone, to which four types of nitrogenous bases are attached, he used a peptide complex, so the new molecule is called PNA – peptide nucleic acid. Initially, he needed this molecule to interact with DNA, for example, to regulate the work of genes. Now he is more interested in works concerning the origin of life: scientists have long been concerned about how key molecules – DNA, RNA and proteins - appeared, and a synthetic molecule combining DNA and proteins can help this.

From the very beginning, I was interested in PNA as a tool for interacting with DNA. By the way, it was with the help of PNA that it was proved that telomeres shorten during our aging, this is directly related to the work for which American scientists received the Nobel Prize this year.

– And what does the interaction of PNA with DNA give?

– If you synthesize a certain PNA, it can be planted on the desired DNA site. We can mark our NNA with a fluorescent label and use a fluorescent microscope to see where it sits. In this way, it is possible to detect, for example, viruses, bacteria, some genes.

– Isn't it easier to detect, for example, viruses using a polymerase chain reaction?

– Maybe it's easier. But the PCR method is based on multiple reproduction of one piece of a virus or bacterium gene. If at least one piece of another virus accidentally gets there, it will also multiply. There is a possibility of errors. With the help of PNA, we detect a single molecule without any reproduction of it. Secondly, a PCR machine costs about fifty thousand dollars. A method c The NCP could become simply a penny.

– And at what stage of research are you at?

– So far at the earliest. The fact is that the PNC invented by Neilson still had significant limitations, I will not go into scientific details. I am currently collaborating with Daniel Lee from Of Pittsburgh, from Carnegie Mellon University, who modified the PNA, making the so-called gamma-PNA. It turned out that it binds much better to DNA. Gamma-PNA removes a lot of the limitations associated with the physical conditions that we stumbled upon earlier. The merit of our group is that we are better than others at labeling DNA with these PNAS. We are already getting amazing results that potentially open up a lot of practical applications.

– For example?

– I have to slow down here, because our article on the fundamental principles of this method is just being prepared for publication.

– Well, at the most interesting place. At least in general terms…

– PNA makes it possible to detect anything cheaply. It becomes a kind of barcode, like stripes on goods. This is how you can detect various pathogens, so you can search for the right genes. For example, we want to know where such and such a gene is located.

– Isn't it known where it is located?

– It is known if everything is in order. But with cancer, for example, chromosomal rearrangement can occur. In principle, you can sequence the entire genome and spend a hundred thousand dollars on it. And with the help of gamma-PNA, you can quickly and cheaply find the right gene.

– Why is it cheap?

– Because my colleague from Israel, Amit Meller, who now works at Boston University, and I use a fairly simple method that gives excellent results. In practice, tiny and cheap devices with nanopores will be needed for detection. Again, I don't want to expand further, because too many groups are hunting for the same topic. At a recent conference in the Netherlands, we were afraid that even after our stingy messages, competitors would figure out what was what. But it doesn't seem like that yet. So far we have some head start in these studies. And when we are done, it will be a strong thing for medicine, because there will be more applications for it than we previously assumed.

– Can you imagine when the work will be brought to a specific "thing" used in practical diagnostics?

– I can't say yet. I repeat, while we check the basic principles themselves. We need a sustainable result. And then, of course, it will be necessary to bring this "thing" in such a way that medical staff can use it without problems. These are my plans for the next few years.

– I suppose it's pointless to ask you about the possibility of returning to Russia, which is now often talked about in our scientific and political environment.

– In principle, attempts to return scientists are not a meaningless thing. America is not a paradise on earth. You need to work hard and a lot here. I can quite admit that people get tired of it. There are other points. I'll give you an example. I have a friend who is a very prominent scientist, a German, who worked in Germany until retirement age came up. And there they didn't stand on ceremony with it: whether you have merit or not, go and rest. Since he was not going to rest, he moved to Boston and began working here, extremely successfully. He has a lot of grants, he has everything his heart desires for work. But recently they began to lure him back to Germany, they probably came to their senses. They say we'll give you government money, you won't even have to worry about grants. And he'll probably come back. The fact is that he is not only a great scientist, but also a great intellectual. He lacks theaters, exhibitions, in general, culture in Boston. This is not New York, everything freezes here in the evening, Boston sleeps. And New York, Moscow, Berlin never sleep.

– Our scientists are unlikely to You will lure Moscow with theaters…

– Still, there are people here who really lack Russian culture. It is clear that this is not the main thing. Will it be able to Can Russia offer comfortable conditions for studying science? My opinion: it can't yet. What people quickly get used to in the USA is freedom and independence. Here, a scientist, when he ceases to be a postdoc and is able to get grants, is his own boss, no one orders him. No one wants to return from America to Russia, so that some academician or director of the institute, completely unknown to world science, decides how a scientist should do science. In America, the value is a scientist with his own rating, and in Russia – academician or director. There is also an academy in the USA, but this is just a meeting of respected people, they do not rule anything and certainly do not deal with the distribution of finances. In Russia , in Some seek the Academy of Sciences in order to get a decent pension, others – in order to get a certain power, so that they depend on them, so that they go to them with petitions. All this corruption, all these relationships according to concepts, and not according to universal rules, will not be able to attract anyone. Therefore, the first thing to do in Russia, – to disperse the Academy of Sciences.

– Not just to deprive of power, but to disperse? What, in your opinion, there are no decent people there at all?

– I've always been told: and here's Ginzburg. Yes, Ginzburg, who's arguing, but how long can it be stretched over the whole of Russia? Now he's gone, who to hide behind? There are probably decent scientists at the academy, but I'm sure there aren't many. It is checked very easily – by the citation index. You can spend hours enumerating its numerous problems, but I believe that it is not necessary to do this, because you do not need to try to solve all these small problems one by one, patch up holes. The Russian scientific system is not only archaic, it is all rotten. It cannot be reformed, a radical break is needed. I see no other way out than to dismiss everyone and from all positions – directors of research institutes, head of labs, and then hire on the terms of a free and transparent competition organized with the participation of experts from abroad. Of course, everyone should be allowed to participate in the competition, regardless of nationality, place of residence, and so on.

There is no scientific community, there is no science, and there are "scientists" in huge numbers. It's hard to say what they do, some just occupy places that university graduates can't get to. You have no idea to what monstrous level they have sunk. As an editor and reviewer of many international scientific journals, I often have to read the manuscripts of articles from Of Russia. I just get sick every time. Only recently I wrote to my old friend on his extremely careless article that if my graduate student had brought this to me, I would have given him a terrible scolding, and the second time I would have simply kicked him out instead.

– Your estimates are very harsh. Well, now, put a fat cross on Russian science? And we don't have a week now that the authorities don't talk about the need to develop science and innovation…

– What makes you think that the state is interested in the development of science? Why on earth? It is not in demand in the country. Where is the industry that needs science? In the USA there is a huge biotech – a giant multibillion-dollar business, there are the largest pharmaceutical companies. They need scientists who will do science for them, they need professors who will educate new cadres. And in Russia has no demand for scientists. Universities breed them, and they leave. A whole new generation of immigrants from Russia in the USA, Europe, Israel, who have gone from graduate student to professor and occupy leading positions in their fields. Their analogues in There is simply no Russia. Point.

There is no real demand for innovation in Russia. You know the answer – petroleum state. Although some of the oil countries are still developing science at the expense of petrodollars. Norway, for example. It is possible and necessary to develop science even when there is no special domestic demand for it. Otherwise, a dead end. At the verbal level, this is clear to everyone, but we need real determination on the part of the country's leadership, and it's not just about allocating more funds.

– And what is this determination, in your opinion, should be?

– I already told you. First of all, disperse the Academy of Sciences, depriving it of the right to steer and distribute. This will be a powerful signal. As long as this frozen feudal structure exists, no evolutionary reform will help. And the longer the truly revolutionary reformation drags on, the more irreversible will be the process of the complete collapse of science in Of Russia.

Eternal Youth Portal www.vechnayamolodost.ru01.12.2009