respiration, formation, and dying off of cells as a result of the continuing process 

 of circulation, in a word, as a result of the sum of the continuous molecular 

 changes that constitute life and whose total results appear before our eyes in 

 the form of the vital phases: embryonic life, youth, sexual maturity, the process 

 of multiplication, old age, and death."* 



Regarding the organism as an integral system in which chemical, physical- 

 chemical, functional, and structural characteristics and properties are mutually 

 dependent on one another and indissolubly bound, forming a closed unity of 

 chemistry, structure, and function, Nagorniy believed that the establishment of a 

 complete theory of individual evolution is possible only on the basis of a de^^iled 

 study of all these forms of appearance of vital activity in their age-associated 

 evolution. 



Nagorniy's ideas have confronted and are confronting age-associated 

 physiology, biochemistry, and morphology with such major tasks as the follow- 

 ing: 



(a) the creation of a total picture of the age-associated changes in the 

 biochemistry, structure, and functions of the animal organism that will cover 

 fully and consecutively all the stages of its ontogenesis; 



(b) the establishment of the major factors in the ontogenetic changes of 

 the organism that determine the shifts in the stages of age-associated develop- 

 ment from the stage of progressive growth to the stage of deep regression; 



(c) on the basis of this, the discovery of ways to affect the ontogenesis of 

 the animal organism and thereby effect a change in its nature in the direction 

 of an increase in the duration of life and preservation of the vitality of the or- 

 ganism during the period of late ontogenesis; 



(d) the creation of a valid and effective theory of the age-associated 

 development of organisms, which will be of decisive importance in the search 

 for ways of influencing the nature of organisms. 



Nagorniy's laboratory performed some very important work on the age- 

 associated changes in structure, the colloidal state, biochemistry, and physio- 

 logical processes in higher animals. Particularly full studies were made of the 

 biochemical features of the ontogenetic changes in the protein composition of 

 protoplasm, linkages of proteins with nucleic acids and lipids, changes in the 

 ratios of the fractions of nucleic acids (RNA and DNA), qualitative and quan- 

 titative changes in the nucleic acids (the ratios of pentoses and phosphorus in 

 them), changes in the so-called structural proteins, the amino acid composition 

 of proteins and of their various fractions, the colloidal-chemical stability and 

 electrical charge of the protoplasmic proteins, and the enzymatic "spectra" of 

 protoplasm. 



A thorough study was made of the ontogenetic changes (in tissues and 

 organs) of water, mineral substances, lipids, phosphatides and sterols, reserve 

 alkalinity and pH, active acidity and buffer properties of the tissues, their reduc- 

 tion and oxidation potentials, electroconductivity, the energy of activation of 

 enzymes and of the protein substrate, and many other matters. 



« F. Engels: Dialectic of Nature, Gospolitizdat, 1948, pp. 170-171, 



34 



