Andrey Belozersky

Childhood

A. N. Belozersky was born in Tashkent, in the family of an official. His father, Nikolay Andreevich Belozersky, was born into a Russian family that migrated to Central Asia, and worked as a lawyer in the judicial chamber. His mother, Evgeniya Semenovna Lahtina, worked as a musician teacher in a gymnasium. There were three children in their family: Nikolay, Lidiya, and Andrey. When his parents died in 1913, Andrey was sent to the Gatchina orphanage, but he was accepted into the family of his mother's sister in 1917, when the orphanage was closed. Tatyana Semenovna Ivanova, sister of Andrey's mother, lived in Verny town (now Alma-Ata).

Work at Moscow University

In 1930, Belozersky met Alexander Robert Kiesel during a trip to Moscow and was invited to work at the Department of Plant Biochemistry at Moscow University, which was being created at that time. Under the guidance of A. R. Kiesel, Belozersky began to study plant proteins at different stages of plant ontogenesis, in particular nucleoproteins, which are complexes of proteins with nucleic acids.

Beginning in 1930, A. N. Belozersky worked at the Department of Plant Biochemistry of Moscow State University. He started as an assistant (1930–1932), then became an associate professor (1932–1943), and finally a professor (1943–1972). In 1938, he was awarded the degree of Candidate of Sciences, and in 1943, he defended his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Biological Sciences on the topic "Nucleoproteins and polynucleic acids of plants."

In 1943, A. N. Belozersky was appointed professor of the Biological Faculty of Moscow State University. In 1960, he was appointed Head of the Department of Plant Biochemistry of Moscow State University (now the Department of Molecular Biology of the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University). After the death of A. N. Belozersky, the department was headed by his student, academician A. S. Spirin.

From 1951 to 1954, A. N. Belozersky was director of the Biology and Soil Research Institute and, between 1954 and 1960, he was head of the Botanical Department of the Biology and Soil Faculty.

In 1963, A. N. Belozersky became the head of the newly organized Department of Virology at the Biology and Soil Faculty, and in 1965, the newly created problematic interfaculty laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry, which in 1991 became the A. N. Belozersky Research Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology.

A. N. Belozersky was directly involved in the renovation and modernization of laboratories and participated in the creation of new places for practical classes. He improved the existing lecture courses for students in the Faculty of Biology and created new ones. He wrote a "Practical Guide to Plant Biochemistry" together with N.I. Proskuryakov.

A. N. Belozersky was very fond of young people, closely following the educational and scientific activities of students. Belozersky created a large school of Russian biochemists (A. S. Spirin, A. S. Antonov, B. F. Vanyushin, I. B. Naumova, etc.). Under his leadership, a large number of people defended their PhDs and doctoral dissertations, and a number of students became members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).

A. N. Belozersky was married twice and had three children: his daughter Natalia from his first marriage and two children from his second marriage, Mikhail and Tatiana. The children were educated in areas close to biology.

A. N. Belozersky died in Moscow from stomach cancer on 31 December 1972, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Nucleic acids investigation

In the early 1930s, A. N. Belozersky was the first in the USSR to begin a systematic study of nucleic acids. At that time, two types of nucleic acids were known: thymonucleic (DNA) isolated from calf thymus and "yeast" (RNA) found in yeast and wheat seedlings. The first was called "animal," and the second was called "vegetable." The first significant works performed by A. N. Belozersky relate to the issue of "animal" and "plant" nucleic acids. In 1934, articles by A. R. Kiesel and A. N. Belozersky appeared in the journal "Hoppe-Seyler's Zeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie" and then in 1935 in the "Scientific Notes of Moscow State University''. In these articles, the presence of thymonucleic acid in plant cells was shown. A. N. Belozersky was the first to isolate and identify thymine, first from the seedlings of pea seeds and then from the seeds of other legumes. He isolated the DNA itself from horse chestnut seeds. Subsequently, the presence of RNA and DNA was confirmed in linden buds, onion bulbs, and wheat germ. The results obtained by Belozersky made it possible to reject the division of nucleic acids into "animal" and "plant" and to affirm the idea of the universal distribution of DNA in both plant and animal cells.

While Belozersky was studying bacteria, he noted the high content of nucleic acids in cells, amounting to 30% of the dry weight, unlike higher organisms. A. N. Belozersky concluded that this fact is associated with high rates of reproduction and growth of bacteria. Later, A. N. Belozersky showed that the amount of nucleic acids, especially RNA, is not a constant value for one species and changes with the age of the culture: young bacterial cells may contain more RNA than old ones. Andrey Nikolaevich pointed out a new aspect (at the same time with T. Caspersson and J. Brachet): the relationship of the number of nucleic acids with the intensity of protein biosynthesis. These conclusions were made by A. N. Belozersky long before the appearance of the "molecular biology" term associated with the publication in the journal "Nature" by James J. Watson and F. Crick on the establishment of a spatial model of the DNA molecule. Thus, as a result of research from 1939 to 1947, A. N. Belozersky obtained the first scientific information in the world on the content of nucleic acids in various bacterial species.

In a paper published in 1957 in Russian, and in 1958 in English, A. N. Belozersky and his student A. S. Spirin discovered an inconsistency between the composition of DNA and ribosomal RNA. They noticed that, with a wide range of DNA changes, the composition of RNA varies little from species to species. At the same time, the composition of proteins also varies greatly from species to species. Soviet scientists have proved that the DNA-RNA-protein biosynthesis scheme requires that all elements be in a certain composite correspondence. This conclusion led to the destruction for the old scheme of this process. F. Crick wrote about the article by Belozersky and Spirin:

“The phase of confusion was started by an article by Belozersky and Spirin in 1958. The data they provided showed that our ideas on a number of important points were too simplistic.”

Soviet scientists discovered that there is a certain part of RNA in the cells that coincides in composition with DNA and is determined by its structure. Later, they suggested that this part of RNA is a link in the transmission of genetic information from DNA to proteins. Part of the RNA discovered by Belozersky and Spirin turned out to be a rapidly synthesizing form of RNA that transfers genetic information from DNA to ribosomes. Later, this part of the RNA was called messenger RNA (mRNA).The work on the study of the nucleotide composition of DNA and RNA in bacteria was the beginning of numerous studies of the composition of nucleic acids in other organisms. These studies were conducted from 1958 to 1965 in groups of the Moscow State University and the USSR Academy of Sciences, headed by A. N. Belozersky. As a result, the composition of DNA and RNA was studied in many actinomycetes (N. V. Shugaeva), fungi (B. F. Vanyushin), algae (M. V. Pakhomova, G. P. Serenkov), and some higher plants (B. F. Vanyushin). A. N. Belozersky actively participated in the creation of modern genosystematics (DNA systematics, DNA taxonomy). Today, this direction is being developed by A. S. Antonov and other students of Belozersky.The scientific activities of the groups headed by A. N. Belozersky include the study of the species functional specificity of adaptive RNAs (G. N. Zaitseva), the study of changes in the amino acid composition of proteins in response to the substitution of nucleotides in DNA (A. S. Antonov), and the study of phosphate in the simplest organisms, particularly in aspects of its transfer from the environment, transport, accumulation, and forms of existence (I. S. Kulaev, M. S. Kritsky).