Клетка и жизнь

Our collaborative work was focused on the role of microtubules in cell spreading and we published our first joint paper on this topic in 1998 in Cell Adhesion and Communication describing the maturation of focal adhesions following the depolymerization of microtubules. While doing research in Moscow, Juri and Olga Pletjushki-na discovered that when microtubules were depolymerized before spreading, the cells began to oscillate morphologically with a period of about 60s. Together, we further explored this finding and showed that the oscillations were dependent on Rho and Rho kinase and, apparently, on calcium. This work was published in Cytoskeleton and Cell Motility in 2001. After FIRCA grant came to an end, my lab continued on this work, motivated, in part, by my thought that the oscillatory behavior was ripe for theoretical and computational studies. We subsequently published papers in

the Biophysical Journal, Cytoskeleton and Cell Motility, the Journal of Cell Biology and PLOS Computational Biology exploring various aspects of the phenomenon that Juri and Olga had discovered, including important role of morphological oscillations in amoeboid migration. And, although I have retired, this investigation continues today in the capable hands of Maryna Kapustina.

During the Fogarty grants, Juri and Olga visited our lab several times for experiments and discussions with our laboratory members. Juris breadth and depth in contemporary cell biology always provided important insights. He was an entertaining and gifted story teller and humorist. Once when I was late coming to the lab, Juri commented that «the boss is never late, he is delayed.»

As part of the FIRCA, my wife Judy and I visited Moscow in 1995. Along with scientific seminars and discussions, we were treated royally with dinners, numerous vodka toasts, sightseeing tours and ballets. I marveled at, despite the obvious lack of resources compared to the West, how much could be accomplished by ingenuity and persistence.

Juri was a superb scientist, a marvelous raconteur and a good friend and colleague. I treasured our time together and Juri will always be missed.

Yuri Vasiliev memorial lecture

^{Graham DUNN. Professor, King’s College London, Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics.}

Этот текст является конспектом лекции, посвященной памяти Ю. М. Васильева, которую Грэхем Данн, ученик и сотрудник Майкла Аберкромби, прочел на Аберкромбиевской конференции, состоявшейся в 2017 г. (год смерти Ю. М. Васильева).

Не always used to joke with me that he wasn’t photogenic.

The joke was that although he was a leading scientist at All-Union Cancer Research Centre of the USSR in Moscow, possibly THE leading scientist, with a lab of about 40 people, he almost never appeared in the Centre’s official group photographs.

The reason I guess was that all intellectual Jews in Soviet Russia were treated as potential dissidents. This made life very difficult and collaboration with West almost impossible but, as we shall see, Yuri was very adept at skirting round these problems.

His chief weapon was humour which is why he loved telling jokes. And one reason why we all loved him. But quite remarkably, Yuri did very good science by any international standards.

The paper was significant for drawing attention to the role of microtubules in cell polarity and the direction of cell locomotion — a theme he spent much of the rest of his life working on. It had over 170 citations by 1988 — very good for the time.

Also in Yuri’s group was his good friend Israel Gelfand (Volodya’s father) who was professor of mathematical biology at Moscow State University.

Things in Moscow then were never quite what they seemed and although Gelfand was considered to be among the top half dozen best mathematicians in the world, he never applied mathematics to biology. Biology was separate for him and was something of a political escape route.

Yuri wrote in his comments to «Cytation Classics» paper: «At the time of this research our group worked in almost complete isolation. We first met Michael Abercrombie (from Cambridge) and other leading specialists on cell behaviour during the Moscow Embryology Conference held in August 1969. It was a great moral support for us when Michael approved our results and recommended their prompt publication».

This meeting was how the lifelong collaboration all began — the Moscow Embryology Conference in 1969 — where Yuri met Michael and also Michaels good friend John Trinkaus (Trink) who was professor of embryology at Yale.

Michael said that the «interests and experience of this group are the closest of any in the world to those of my own».