Is it possible to slow down and speed up biological time? Biologists already partially know how to slow it down. It is enough to cool the body, and the living will slow down, or even stop altogether, while increasing, they restore the normal rhythm. Scientists have long been thinking about how to stop the biological clock of astronauts for a given period. In this state, they can reach the most distant planets, almost without aging during the journey. But to accelerate biological time is still much more difficult.
How to concentrate biological time? Biological scientists have determined that special substances called biogenic stimulants serve as a kind of concentrator of biological time. The biological clock mechanism appears to be the same in all organisms, excluding bacteria, which have not "acquired" a clock at all. But do life processes in unicellular and multicellular organisms proceed with the same speed? After all, some have a day's life, others a century.
Here is a rotifer - a microscopic but multicellular creature. Some of its species live only one week. During this week, the rotifer manages to grow and age. So how does the biological time go on in this rotifer, as in humans, or 3 thousand times faster?
Nature itself has given the researcher a device that allows you to monitor the flow of biological time in a living organism, without entering directly into its life and without violating the relationship in its structure. This device is the process of division itself. The rate of its division indirectly speaks about the metabolism inside it, and about the time in which it lives. Cell division also gives even more important information - where is the mechanism that controls the course of biological time in living things.
At first glance, it seems somewhat strange that an elephant, a man, a mouse and other mammals, so vastly different in size and life expectancy, take their first steps on the path of life at the same speed.
If we consider the first steps of life in development from one cell and compare a mouse and an elephant, it turns out that an elephant lives for 60 years, a mouse for 2-3 years. Embryonic development in a mouse is 21 days, and in an elephant - 660, almost 2 years. It all starts at the same time, but ends in a different way. Maybe the biological time of the mouse cell immediately ran faster, and it overtook the development of the elephant embryo several times? No, it’s not. Both the mouse and the baby elephant develop at the same rate for the first 7 days. But why does the biological clock run in the same way in the embryos of an elephant and a mouse in the first week?
It turned out that during this period, in almost all embryos of mammals, the biological clock is set, as it were, on a "dog." Hereditary mechanisms - genes that regulate the rate of growth and metabolism, do not work at this time.
First, the embryo gains a cell mass, in which it will then have to build various organs. As soon as the construction of organs begins, it is as if the spring of a clock is wound. Each plant is now being done with care and not to the end. All the work of the biological clock is under the control of the genetic apparatus, and the more complex the organism becomes as it develops, the more clearly the genes give information. The body begins to dominate the work of the biological clock, and the action of various hormones further slows down the biological time. In an embryo, whose biological clock is not so strongly constrained by the genetic apparatus and hormonal influences, because the endocrine system has not yet developed.
Is it possible to remove the time brake in an adult body and make it live faster? Maybe there are substances that concentrate time, or, more simply and more accurately, remove the time brake? The whole danger in this case is reduced to a violation of the biological clock. The acceleration of metabolism and cell division must be harmonious and always within the normal range. Metabolism in living cells always takes place at a slightly lower rate; the cell has rather large reserves in case of danger. This means that if a danger signal is given, the cell will partially remove its temporary brake and all processes in it will proceed with an increased speed. To do this, it is necessary to act directly on those genes that regulate the rates of chemical interactions of huge biomolecules inside the cell.
How do you send a danger signal to a cage? In the process of evolution, a mechanism has developed in the cells of the body that perceives decay products that are obtained from cells suffering in the neighborhood. Since living beings have the same type of molecular mechanisms for perception of danger, in the presence of decay products, the biological clocks of both animals and plants will accelerate. That is why aloe leaves kept in the dark, or animal tissues kept at 4 ° C for several days already contain substances that can accelerate the metabolism in the cells of the body into which they will be introduced.
At the very beginning of embryonic development, a person lives in accelerated biological time. As it develops, biological time slows down. After birth, it continues to go somewhat faster than in an adult. By old age, people think that time "stands still." Doesn't the time brake - the genes of time - come into play here at full capacity?
It has long been noticed that all life on Earth obeys certain rhythms that are set by global processes. This is the daily rotation of the planet around its axis and its movement in the circumsolar orbit. Living organisms somehow sense time, and their behavior is subject to its flow. This is manifested in the alternation of periods of activity and sleep in animals, in the opening and closing of flowers in plants. Migratory birds return to their nesting sites every spring, hatch chicks and migrate to warmer regions for wintering.
What is a biological clock?
The rhythm of the flow of all life processes is a property inherent in all the inhabitants of our planet. For example, marine unicellular flagellates glow at night. It is not known why they do this. But during the day they do not glow. Flagellates received this property in the process of evolution.
Every living organism on Earth - both plants and animals - has an internal clock. They determine the frequency of life, tied to the duration of the earth's day. This biological clock adjusts its course to the frequency of day and night, it does not depend on temperature changes. In addition to daily cycles, there are seasonal (annual) and lunar periods.
The biological clock is to some extent a conventional concept implying the property of living organisms to orient themselves in time. This property is inherent in them at the genetic level and is inherited.
Exploring the biological clock mechanism
For a long time, the rhythm of the life processes of living organisms was explained by the rhythm of changes in environmental conditions: illumination, humidity, temperature, atmospheric pressure and even the intensity of cosmic radiation. However, simple experiments have shown that the biological clock works regardless of changes in external conditions.
Today it is known that they are in every cell. In complex organisms, clocks form a complex hierarchical system. This is necessary to function as a whole. If any organs and tissues are not coordinated in time, various types of diseases arise. The internal clock is endogenous, that is, it has an internal nature and is adjusted by signals from the outside. What else do we know?
The biological clock is inherited. Evidence of this fact has been found in recent years. Cells have clock genes. They are susceptible to mutation and natural selection. This is necessary to coordinate the processes of life with the daily rotation of the Earth. Since in different latitudes the ratio of the length of the day and night is not the same throughout the year, the clock is also needed to adapt to the changing seasons. They must take into account whether day and night is increasing or decreasing. There is no other way to distinguish between spring and autumn.
By studying the biological clock of plants, scientists have found out the mechanism of their adaptation to changes in the length of the day. This happens with the participation of special phytochrome regulators. How does this mechanism work? The phytochrome enzyme exists in two forms, which transform from one to another depending on the time of day. The result is a clock regulated by external signals. All processes in plants - growth, flowering - depend on the concentration of the phytochrome enzyme.
The mechanism of the intracellular clock has not yet been fully understood, but most of the way has been covered.
Circadian rhythms in the human body
Periodic changes in the intensity of biological processes are associated with the alternation of day and night. These rhythms are called circadian, or circadian. Their frequency is about 24 hours. Although circadian rhythms are associated with processes outside the body, they are of endogenous origin.
A person has no organs and physiological functions that would not obey the daily cycles. Today, more than 300 of them are known.
The human biological clock regulates the following processes in accordance with the daily rhythms:
Heart rate and respiration;
Oxygen consumption by the body;
Intestinal peristalsis;
The intensity of the glands;
Alternating sleep and rest.
These are only the main manifestations.
The rhythm of physiological functions occurs at all levels - from changes within the cell to reactions at the level of the organism. Experiments in recent years have shown that circadian rhythms are based on endogenous, self-sustaining processes. The human biological clock is set to a frequency of 24 hours. They are associated with changes in the environment. The biological clock is synchronized with some of these changes. The most typical of them are the alternation of day and night and daily temperature fluctuations.
It is believed that in higher organisms, the main clock is located in the brain in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the thalamus. Nerve fibers from the optic nerve lead to it, and the hormone melatonin, produced by the pineal gland, is brought with the blood. This is an organ that was once the third eye in ancient reptiles and retained the functions of regulating circadian rhythms.
Organ biological clock
All physiological processes in the human body proceed with a certain cyclicality. Temperature, pressure, blood sugar concentration change.
Human organs are subject to a daily rhythm. In 24 hours, their functions go through periods of rise and fall in turn. That is, always, at the same time, for 2 hours, the organ works especially effectively, after which it enters the relaxation phase. At this time, the organ rests and regenerates. This phase also lasts 2 hours.
For example, the phase of the rise in stomach activity occurs from 7 to 9 hours, followed by a decline from 9 to 11. The spleen and pancreas are active from 9 to 11, and from 11 to 13 they are resting. In the heart, these periods fall at 11-13 hours and 13-15 hours. In the bladder, the activity phase is from 15 to 17, rest and rest - from 17 to 19.
The biological clock of organs is one of those mechanisms that allowed the inhabitants of the Earth to adapt to the daily rhythm over millions of years of evolution. But man-made civilization is steadily breaking this rhythm. Studies show that it is easy to unbalance the body's biological clock. It is enough only to radically change the diet. For example, start dining in the middle of the night. Therefore, a strict diet is a fundamental principle. It is especially important to observe it from early childhood, when the biological clock of the human body “starts up”. Life expectancy directly depends on this.
Chronogerontology
This is a new, very recently emerged scientific discipline that studies age-related changes in biological rhythms that occur in the human body. Chronogerontology arose at the junction of two sciences - chronobiology and gerontology.
One of the subjects of research is the mechanism of functioning of the so-called "large biological clock". This term was first introduced into circulation by the outstanding scientist V.M.Dilman.
“Large biological clock” is a rather conventional concept. Rather, it is a model of the aging processes in the body. It provides an understanding of the relationship between a person's lifestyle, his food addictions with the actual biological age. This watch counts the lifespan. They record the accumulation of changes in the human body from the moment of birth to death.
The course of the large biological clock is uneven. They are in a hurry, sometimes lagging behind. Many factors influence their course. They either shorten or lengthen life.
The principle of functioning of the large biological clock is that it does not measure periods of time. They measure the rhythm of the processes, or rather, the loss of it with age.
Research in this direction can help in solving the main issue of medicine - the elimination of aging diseases, which today are the main obstacle in reaching the species limit of human life. Now this figure is estimated at 120 years.
Sleep
The internal rhythms of the body regulate all vital processes. The time of falling asleep and waking up, the duration of sleep - the "third eye" - the thalamus - is responsible for everything. It has been proven that this part of the brain is responsible for the production of melatonin, a hormone that regulates human biorhythms. Its level obeys circadian rhythms and is regulated by the illumination of the retina. As the intensity of the light flux changes, the level of melatonin increases or decreases.
The sleep mechanism is very delicate and vulnerable. Violation of the alternation of sleep and wakefulness, which is inherent in a person by nature, causes serious harm to health. For example, regular shift work that involves working at night is associated with a higher likelihood of diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart attacks and cancer.
In a dream, a person completely relaxes. All organs are resting, only the brain continues to work, systematizing the information received during the day.
Reduced sleep duration
Civilization makes its own adjustments to life. By examining the biological sleep clock, scientists found that modern humans sleep 1.5 hours less than humans in the 19th century. What is the danger of reducing the time of night rest?
Violation of the natural rhythm of the alternation of sleep and wakefulness leads to malfunctions and disruptions in the work of vital systems of the human body: immune, cardiovascular, endocrine. Lack of sleep leads to excess body weight and affects vision. A person begins to feel discomfort in the eyes, the clarity of the image is disturbed, there is a danger of developing a serious disease - glaucoma.
Lack of sleep provokes disruptions in the work of the human endocrine system, thereby increasing the risk of a serious illness - diabetes mellitus.
The researchers found an interesting pattern: People who sleep 6.5 to 7.5 hours have a longer life expectancy. Both shortening and increasing sleep time leads to a decrease in life expectancy.
The biological clock and women's health
Many studies are devoted to this problem. A woman's biological clock is the ability of her body to produce offspring. There is another term - fertility. We are talking about the age limit favorable for the birth of children.
Several decades ago, the watch showed the thirty-year mark. It was believed that the realization of themselves as mothers for the fair sex after this age is associated with a risk to the health of the woman and her unborn child.
Now the situation has changed. The number of women who conceived a child for the first time between the ages of 30 and 39 has increased significantly - 2.5 times, and those who did this after 40 have increased by 50%.
Nevertheless, experts consider 20-24 years to be a favorable age for motherhood. Often the desire to get an education, to realize oneself in the professional sphere wins. Only a few women take on the responsibility of raising a baby at this age. Puberty is 10 years ahead of emotional maturity. Therefore, most experts are inclined to believe that for a modern woman, the optimal time for giving birth is 35 years. Today they are no longer included in the so-called risk group.
Biological clock and medicine
The response of the human body to various influences depends on the phase of the circadian rhythm. Therefore, biological rhythms play an important role in medicine, especially in the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. So, the effect of drugs depends on the phase of the circadian biorhythm. For example, when treating teeth, the analgesic effect is maximally manifested from 12 to 18 hours.
Chronopharmacology studies the change in the sensitivity of the human body to drugs. Based on information about daily biorhythms, the most effective drug intake regimens are being developed.
For example, purely individual fluctuations in blood pressure values \u200b\u200brequire taking this factor into account when taking medications for the treatment of hypertension, ischemia. So, in order to avoid a crisis, people from the risk group should take medications in the evening, when the body is most vulnerable.
In addition to the fact that the biorhythms of the human body affect the effect of taking drugs, rhythm disturbances can be the cause of various diseases. They belong to the so-called dynamic ailments.
Desynchronosis and its prevention
Daylight is of great importance for human health. It is the sunlight that ensures the natural synchronization of biorhythms. If the illumination is insufficient, as is the case in winter, a failure occurs. This can be the cause of many diseases. Mental (depressive states) and physical (decreased general immunity, weakness, etc.) develop. The cause of these disorders lies in desynchronosis.
Desynchronosis occurs when the biological clock of the human body fails. The reasons may vary. Desynchronosis occurs when the time zone is changed for a long period, during the adaptation period during the transition to winter (summer) time, during shift work, alcohol addiction, and disorderly eating habits. This is expressed in sleep disorders, migraine attacks, decreased attention and concentration. As a result, apathy and depression can occur. For older people, adaptation is more difficult, it takes them longer.
For the prevention of desynchronosis, correction of the body's rhythms, substances are used that can affect the phases of biological rhythms. They are called chronobiotics. They are found in medicinal plants.
The biological clock lends itself well to music. It helps to increase labor productivity when performing monotonous work. Music also treats sleep disorders and neuropsychiatric diseases.
Rhythm in everything is the way to improve the quality of life.
The practical importance of biorhythmology
The biological clock is an object of serious scientific research. Their customers are many branches of the economy. The results of studying the biological rhythms of living organisms are successfully applied in practice.
Knowledge of the rhythms of life of domestic animals and cultivated plants helps to increase the efficiency of agricultural production. Hunters and fishermen use this knowledge.
Daily fluctuations in the body of physiological processes are taken into account by medical science. The effectiveness of taking medications, surgical interventions, performing medical procedures and manipulations directly depends on the biological clock of organs and systems.
Achievements of biorhythmology have been used for a long time in organizing the work and rest regime of aircraft crews. Their job involves crossing several time zones in one flight. Eliminating the adverse effect of this factor is very important for maintaining the health of airline flight personnel.
It is difficult to do without the achievements of biorhythmology in space medicine, especially when preparing long-term flights. The far-reaching ambitious plans for the creation of human settlements on Mars will apparently not do without studying the peculiarities of the functioning of the human biological clock in the conditions of this planet.
- 108.00 KbBiological time. Biological age
on the course Concepts of modern natural science
Introduction 3
Conclusion 16
Introduction
No answer.
Closely connected with the concept of temporal organization is the problem of the specificity of the flow of time in living systems, or, as it is called, the problem of biological time. This problem has been addressed by many scientists.
VI Vernadsky played a huge role in this issue, who created the concept of biological space-time and thereby raised the theory of the biosphere to a theoretical level.
The study of the problem of biological time is of great importance. First, it is associated with the concept of "biological rhythms". All life on our planet bears the imprint of the rhythmic pattern of events characteristic of our Earth. A person lives in a complex system of biorhythms, from short ones - at the molecular level - with a period of several seconds, to global ones associated with annual changes in solar activity.
Secondly, all this has to do with the biological age of a person as an indicator of the level of development, change or deterioration of the structure, its functional system, the organism as a whole or the community of organisms (biocenosis), expressed in units of time by correlating the values \u200b\u200bthat determine these processes of biological markers aging with reference average statistical dependences of changes in these biomarkers on calendar age.
Since all organisms and communities of organisms represent correlated systems, all changes that take place in them ultimately lead to their decay - death, as in all physical systems. But the process of decay of organisms and communities of organisms, or their aging, is uneven. Therefore, at the same astronomical or calendar age of different organisms, people, communities, the degree of aging of individual organs, elements and systems will be different.
And, thirdly, the relevance of this essay can be justified by the fact that the study of these exciting issues, and attempts to penetrate into the unknown can bring real results. Human life can qualitatively change, the biological abilities of individuals can increase and, finally, who knows, perhaps we will come to the unraveling of the essence of the Universe and gain new knowledge.
The purpose of this essay is to consider the formulation of the concept of "biological time", the essence of the biorhythmological approach to the phenomenon of time. And also find out what is the biological age of the individual. Determine the criteria for biological age and consider the characteristics of the biological age of men and women.
Chapter 1. Biological time.
§one. Formulation of the concept and introduction of the term.
Closely connected with the concept of temporal organization is the problem of the specificity of the flow of time in living systems, or, as it is called, the problem of biological time.
Most authors emphasize that time is one in the Universe, there is no special (for example, biological time), it is legitimate to speak only about a subjective assessment of time. However, there is also an opposite position, which has a considerable number of supporters. The problem of biological time was posed more than 100 years ago by K. Baer, \u200b\u200bthe founder of embryology. The scientifically grounded idea of \u200b\u200bbiological time belongs to V.I. Vernadsky. In 1929-1931.
VI Vernadsky creates the concept of biological space-time and thereby raises the theory of the biosphere to a theoretical level. The impetus for the long-overdue intention of Vernadsky to speak directly and openly about the problem of time in modern science was the just published book of the English astronomer Arthur Eddington, already well known to him in literature, an ardent supporter and even propagandist of the theory of relativity. On August 13, he writes to B.L. Lichkov: “The other day I got Eddington’s book The nature o f the physical World - it makes you think a lot. He gives a picture of the World, where there are no laws of universal gravitation in their usual view. Quite a lot was new to me in some of the consequences. An attempt to build a World where the laws of causality are limited. Eddington draws philosophical and religious conclusions from this ... It seems to me, however, that the resulting picture of the World cannot be correct, since Eddington accepts the sharp difference between time and space, essentially omitting the phenomena of symmetry. "
In September in Prague, Vernadsky begins to work closely on the problem of time. Other extremely important and eloquent testimonies also provide insight into the direction of his thought and intentions. On September 9, 1929 he wrote to his deputy for BIOGEL A.P. Vinogradov. “I've been thinking about living matter a lot here and trying to sketch out some thoughts. I want to make a report on the dissymmetry of living matter in biological time - I don’t know, in the Society of Naturalists (like the previous two reports), or at the annual meeting of our Laboratory (by the way, we need to check when it is officially approved)? While it is very difficult for me to cope with this task, but I hope these few weeks that I have left here, to move it. It is very interesting to touch upon both issues together: both dissymmetry, discovered by Pasteur, and so little penetrated into the consciousness of naturalists, and biological time, about which I have been thinking a lot - for several years now - have much in common and are now acquiring great interest in connection with the new direction of physical
disciplines. I don't know if I will be able to formulate everything clearly - but I want to consider these questions [in connection] with the new physics. For biological time, it is important to determine the unit of this time, equal to the minimum interval between two generations - between cell divisions or divisions of bacteria (Cyanophyceae?). In the latter case, we are not dealing with the environment of our gravitation, but with the environment of molecular forces. And there must be a jump here? A leap that has biological significance. In the first case, there should be hours, and in the second 15-20 minutes? It will be necessary to order someone to bring together all the experimental material available in this area, and we can print this summary in our writings. " (Simultaneously with the creation of BIOGEL, the right to publish her works was obtained non-periodically).
Vernadsky's words are extremely important for the topic of this essay: most likely, here, on September 9, 1929, Vernadsky first voiced his new term biological time. Not yet in a scientific article, but in a private letter. Then Vernadsky begins with a very wide, extreme coverage: “The time of a physicist is undoubtedly not the abstract time of a mathematician or a philosopher, and it manifests itself in different phenomena in such different forms that we are forced to note it in our empirical knowledge. We are talking about historical, geological, cosmic, etc. times. It is convenient to distinguish biological time within which life phenomena manifest themselves.
This biological time corresponds to one and a half to two billion, during which we know the existence of biological processes on Earth, starting with the Archaeozoic. It is very possible that these years are associated only with the existence of our planet, and not with the reality of life in Space. We now clearly come to the conclusion that the duration of the existence of cosmic bodies is limiting, i.e. and here we are dealing with an irreversible process. How extreme is life in its manifestations in the Cosmos, we do not know, since our knowledge of life in the Cosmos is insignificant. It is possible that billions of years correspond to the Earth's planetary time and constitute only a small part of biological time. "
Vernadsky asserts: “On the basis of the new physics, the phenomenon should be studied in the space-time complex. The space of life has a special, unique symmetric state in nature. The time that corresponds to it has not only a polar character of vectors, but a special, inherent parameter, a special unit of measurement associated with life ”.
Vernadsky was the only scientist in 1929 who, with his concept of biological time, turned all representations by 180 degrees: not life as an insignificant, not taken into account detail on an insignificant particle in space - the planet Earth, exists against the background of the great Universe, but the entire material Universe unfolds against the background of life time.
It should be said about the priority in introducing the concept of biological time. The concept exists in today's science.
In world literature, the priority in the use of the concept of biological time is associated with the name of the French histologist Leconte du Nui. While working as a doctor in a hospital during the First World War, he became interested in the speed of wound healing and began to research this problem. Including from the point of view of time, which he divided into external and internal, calling the latter physiological or biological.
In the subsequent rather rapid development of works related to the use of the term and the concept of biological time, especially in the 60-70s, it acquired a completely different direction, already contained in the works of Lecomte du Nui and G. Bachmann. This direction became known as biorhythmology.
§2. Biorhythmological approach to the phenomenon of time.
Any changes in living systems are detected only when comparing the states of the system at least two time points separated by a larger or smaller interval. However, their nature can be different. Phase changes in the system are said to be when the stages of some biological process are successively replaced in the system. An example is the change in the stages of ontogenesis, that is, the individual development of the organism. Changes of this type are inherent in the morphophysiological parameters of the organism after exposure to some factor. These changes characterize both the normal course of processes in the body and the response to stimuli.
There is a special class of periodic changes in the activity and behavior of living systems - biological rhythms. The doctrine of biological rhythms (in the narrow sense) was called biorhythmology, because today it is recognized that biological rhythm is one of the most important tools for studying the role of the time factor in the activity of living systems and their temporal organization.
A person lives in a complex system of biorhythms, from short ones - at the molecular level - with a period of several seconds, to global ones associated with annual changes in solar activity. Biological rhythms or biorhythms are more or less regular changes in the nature and intensity of biological processes. The ability for such changes in vital activity is inherited and found in almost all living organisms. They can be observed in individual cells, tissues and organs, in whole organisms and in populations.
Let's highlight the following important achievements of chronobiology (a field of science that studies periodic (cyclic) phenomena that occur in living organisms in time and their adaptation to solar and lunar rhythms):
Description of work
In modern conditions, science cannot be limited to the analysis of the spatial aspect separately from the temporal, they are linked together. Space in natural science expresses the length, order and nature of the placement of a material object, their mutual arrangement.
Time in natural science reflects the sequence of processes of change and the duration of the existence of an object.
No attempts have been made to determine the unity of the spatio-temporal organization in relation to a living object. The writer Sartakov in the novel "The Philosopher's Stone":
“Albert Einstein, as a mathematician, deciphered a single space-time, finding the 4th dimension. But this is only for dead matter. Meanwhile, life, the course of life are in no way separable from space and time. Einstein, why did you neglect this? I also want to figure out space and time, but for living matter. I've tried everything. What science will give me the answer to this? "
Chapter 1. Biological time 5
§one. Definition of the concept and introduction of the term 5
§2. Biorhythmological approach to the phenomenon of time 7
Chapter 2. Biological age 11
§one. Concept and criteria for determining biological age 11
§2. Biological age of men and women 13
Conclusion 16
List of used literature 18
uniform duration of a class of comparable biological processes of a living organism. The idea that the nature of living organisms is primarily due to the specifics of the temporal organization of the processes taking place in them was expressed in the middle of the 19th century by Karl Ernst von Baer1. Some researchers tried to introduce the concepts of "biological time" (Vernadsky V.I.), "physiological time" (leconte du Nooyy), "organic time" (G. Bakman) into scientific use. However, the insufficient elaboration of the philosophical doctrine of time did not allow defining the introduced concepts in such a way that they could be used in experimental and theoretical research, just as the concept of "time" is used in physics. Researchers came closest to an adequate understanding of biological time, who discovered that if the periods of any repetitive processes of a living organism are used as a self-identical unit of duration, then specific patterns of its development can be identified. Particularly significant results on this path of research were obtained by T.A. Detlaf1, who in 1960, together with her brother, physicist A.A. Detlaf, proposed using the duration of one mitotic cycle of the period of synchronous cleavage divisions designated by them as a unit of time measurement in the study of embryonic development of poikilothermic animals? and 0 received on the initiative of A.A. Neifakha name "detlaf" 2. T.A. Detlaf has developed a method of timing the development of living organisms in units of biological time? and used it 0 in the study of many species of poikilothermic animals3. However, until recently, the question of the legality of qualifying such units of duration as units of a special type of time remained open, since, being the durations of the periods of cyclic processes of living organisms, they are subject to random fluctuations, while throughout the history of the development of the concept of time, uniformity is considered as one of the most important properties time. An analysis of the concept and criteria of uniformity has convincingly shown that uniformity is a relative property of compared material processes and that, in principle, it is possible for an unlimited set of classes of uniform processes (CSPs) satisfying the uniformity criteria, each of which in the corresponding area of \u200b\u200bmaterial reality has the properties of uniformity and is suitable for introduction of units of duration and practical measurement of time 1. At the same time, it turned out that the CSP can exist in such holistic highly integrated material systems in which material processes are so closely interconnected and coupled that they behave as a single flow, synchronously and proportionally accelerating and decelerating under the influence of various and, including randomly changing factors. Living organisms are precisely such systems. The presence of classes of similar biological processes in living organisms is evidenced by the studies of T.A. Detlaf and her colleagues. They found that with a change in the temperature of the environment, the durations of various stages of embryonic development of poikilothermic animals change proportionally and that this regularity has a fundamental character, covering the processes of all structural levels of organization of the embryo. As noted by T.A. Detlaf, “... with a change in temperature, the duration of processes that have a very different nature and are carried out at different levels of organization of the organism changes proportionally: intracellular (molecular and ultrastructural), cellular (during cell division and differentiation), at the level of morphogenetic movements , processes of induction and organogenesis "2. In other words, the entire set of biological processes that make up the development of the embryo behaves as a single integral process. It contains both relatively slow (processes of cell division and their differentiation occurring at the cellular level) and very fast ones occurring at the intracellular, molecular level, which include, for example, enzymatic reactions within cellular metabolism. It is quite obvious that if the synchronicity and proportionality of changes in the rates of biological processes were violated at some structural levels of the organization of the embryo, this would destroy the regular course of the entire flow of processes of formation and development of a living organism. Pointing to this circumstance, T.A. Detlaf emphasizes: “It will not be an exaggeration if we say that without this ability of poiky, loterm organisms could not exist at all in the changing conditions of the external environment: if different components of the complex of processes that make up any stage of development would change asynchronously, this would lead to the occurrence of violations of normal development, and at later stages - to disruption of the normal functioning of the organism. It is no coincidence that one of the first reactions of embryos to approaching the boundaries of optimal temperatures is the desynchronization of individual developmental processes ”(Ibid.). Biological and physical time are mutually stochastic, since units of biological time represent the duration of such repeating biological processes, which, being measured in units of physical time, change in a random way, depending on random changes in the characteristics of the environment. The processes of functioning and development of living organisms, even genetically sufficiently distant from each other biological species, when they are timed in units of their own biological time, obey the uniform laws of functioning and development2. At present, it is becoming more and more obvious that it is impossible to reveal the essence of life and learn to describe it mathematically as a special movement of matter without introducing the concept of biological time into the conceptual apparatus of biology. By timing and theoretically describing biological processes in units of biological time, it will be possible to break through the external stochasticity of processes to those dynamic laws according to which the organism develops in accordance with a given genetic program. This conclusion is confirmed by the results of more than a century of studies of the development of living organisms and the biological processes occurring in them using specific units of duration. For the first time, a special unit of duration, which he called “plastochron”, was introduced by the German botanist E. Askenazi1, who defined it as the period of inception of one primordium of the metamere2 of the “stem unit”. In the future, the unit for measuring the duration of "plastochron" was used by K. Thornthwaite1, D.A. Sabinin2, E.F. Markovskaya and T.G. Kharkina (Markovskaya, Kharkina 1997) and others. When studying the embryonic development of living organisms, I.I. Schmalhausen 3. However, used by I.I. Schmalhausen, units of duration associated with a certain change in the volume of the embryo turned out to be applicable only when studying the growth of an organism, and not its development. Some researchers use one or another fraction of the total time of embryonic development as a unit of duration. These units include, for example, "1% DT" (DT - Development Time), which was used to study the development of sturgeon embryos (Detlaf, Ginzburg, 1954), poultry (Eremeev, 1957, 1959), insects ( Striebel 1960; Ball 1982; Mori 1986). And although it is applicable only when studying organisms that emerge from the egg membranes at the same stage of development, it nevertheless allows one to discover many patterns of embryonic development of the animals under study. So, G.P. Eremeev, studying the embryonic development of different species of birds, expressed the time of the onset of developmental stages in fractions of the period from laying the egg to hatching. As a result, it turned out that in such domestic birds as chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, as well as in such birds as lapwing, domestic pigeon, black tern, the same stages of embryonic development when measuring the time by the above method occur “simultaneously”, while in units of astronomical time the difference in the duration of individual stages of development in different birds reaches many days. In the early 80s, Yu.N. Gorodilov proposed to use “the period of time during which the increment of a single somite during metamerization of the complex of the axial anlage of the embryo from 1 to 60 somites” should be used as a unit of duration when studying the temporal patterns of development of teleost fishes (Gorodilov, 1980: 471). In bacteriology, there is an opinion that “to assess the processes of growth and development of bacteria, it is advisable to use not the usual and stable physical time, but the variable generation time (?) ...” 1. Unfortunately, the units of biological time introduced by a number of biologists are too large to mathematically model more fundamental biological processes of a living organism2. There are good reasons to believe that biological (biochemical and biophysical) processes of a living organism begin with catalytic cycles of enzymatic reactions of intracellular metabolism. Back in the early 1960s, Christiansen made convincing arguments in favor of the coherence of the catalytic cycles of all enzyme molecules involved in the catalysis of a specific biochemical reaction3. In this case, it is natural to assume that for most of the period of the catalytic cycle, the enzyme macromolecules are in stable conformations, and the reacting medium is in a liquid-crystalline state4, at which the movement of molecules in the reacting medium is inhibited as much as possible. only for short, strictly dosed moments of conformational transitions of enzyme macromolecules does the reacting medium enter a liquid state, excited by conformational changes in the enzyme macromolecules1. In this case, the processes of diffusion of molecules in the reacting medium proceed intensively. Thus, the idea is quite legitimate, according to which the catalytic cycles of all enzyme molecules participating in the biochemical reaction proceed synchronously, due to which the catalytic cycle is an elementary act of the biochemical reaction with biological significance, and the duration of this cycle is then an indivisible quantum of biological time. Within the quanta of biological time, there are no biological processes, but physical interactions of atoms and elementary particles and physicochemical processes take place, however, they cannot flow freely due to structural and organizational restrictions imposed on them by a living cell. In particular, the normal course of physical and physicochemical processes is hindered by the fundamental stochasticity of the duration of catalytic cycles, which destroys the normal functioning of physical laws in the intracellular reactive environment and, as it were, subordinates this environment to the action of biological laws. Biological time is historically and hierarchically multilevel. In the process of ontogenetic development, each living organism, starting with a single fertilized egg, gradually turns into a complex hierarchically multilevel material system with specific patterns of temporal organization of processes at different levels. The question of whether the biological times of different hierarchical levels are only different scale levels of the same time or qualitatively different biological times arise at different levels remains open today. As for the biological time of the superorganic structures of living matter, it is qualitatively different from the biological time of living organisms. The main units of time for the supraorganic structures of living matter, apparently, can serve as the life span of successive generations of corresponding living organisms, as suggested by many researchers. In this case, we should not talk about the life span of generations of living organisms averaged over all times, but about the life span of generations that actually replace each other in the immediate current time, since it is the changes (in units of physical time) in the durations of the existence of successive generations, considered as congruent units, transform them into units of specific time, while the periods of life of generations averaged and containing a constant number of units of physical time are units of physical time. In modern biology, as in all natural sciences, the International System of Units of Physical Quantities (SI) is used. The transition in biology from physical to biological time is tantamount to replacing one of the fundamental units - the second - with the corresponding unit of biological time. Due to the mutual stochasticity of physical and biological time, the derived quantities, in the dimensions of which there is the dimension of physical time "second", will turn into stochastic variable quantities. In a similar way, within biological systems and processes, all physical constants, in the dimensions of which the "second" appears, will cease to exist. As the cognition of living matter and the identification of biological laws proper, their own biological derivatives and constants will appear, in the dimensions of which the dimensions of biological time will be. In particular, with the transition in the mathematical description of biological processes to biological time, the concept of "uniform spatial movement" will lose its meaning and there will be a need to develop an idea of \u200b\u200bthe "biological space" of a living organism, equal distances in which are determined not in spatial but in time units. See: “Historicality of Time”; "Multilevel time"; "Relativity of uniformity of time"; "Physical time". lit. Detlaf T.A. Temperature-time patterns of development of poikilothermic animals. - Moscow: Nauka, 2001 .-- 211 p. Khasanov I.A. The phenomenon of time. Part I. Objective time. - M., 1998. Khasanov I.A. Time: nature, uniformity, dimension. - M .: Progress Tradition, 2001. Khasanov I.A. Biological time. - M., 1999 .-- 39 p. // http: //www.chronos. msu.ru/RREPORTS/khasanov_biologicheskoe.pdf Ilgiz A. Khasanov
The possibility of the emergence of a complex system of internal time was also drawn by I.R. Prigogine: in the case of self-organization, each such system coordinates its internal processes in accordance with its own time. Prigogine called this relativism of system time and noted that as soon as a dissipative structure is formed, the homogeneity of space and time is violated. Moreover, he believed that living systems are endowed with the ability to sense the direction of time. Psychology also notes this orientation of time. We remember the past, but we do not remember the future!
Biological space and time characterize the features of the spatio-temporal parameters of the organization of matter: the biological being of the human individual, the change in the types of vegetation and animals, the phases of their development. Even Aristotle distinguished two essences of time: one - as a parameter that fixes various states of motion of bodies, and the other - as birth and death, i.e. as a characteristic of the age of the system and, therefore, its direction from the past to the future.
Along with the linear perception of time, a person has a psychological sensation of the passage of time, due, among other things, to his internal organization. This view is called biological time, or biological clock. The biological clock reflects the rhythmic nature of the processes in a living organism in the form of its response to the rhythms of nature and the whole Universe as a whole. The emergence of biological time, its own for each living system, is due to the synchronization of biochemical processes in the body.
Since a living organism is a hierarchical system, it must measure its functioning with the synchronization of all sublevels and subsystems not only in time, but also in biological space. Such synchronization is associated with the presence of biorhythms in the system. The more complex the system, the more biorhythms it has. American cyberneticist N. Winner (1894-1964) believed that "it is the rhythms of the brain that explain our ability to sense time."
Most of the physiological processes of growth, development, movement and metabolism in cells are subject to rhythmic changes due to the daily (circadian) rhythm of the external environment. Thus, in plants, the rhythmic cycles of closing flowers and lowering leaves at night and opening them in the daytime are well known. However, this is not always associated only with external exposure to light. Russian biophysicist S.E. Schnol gives the curious example of Meran's beans, the leaves of which came up and down in the evening and morning, even if they were in a completely dark room. The leaves, as it were, "felt" the time and determined it with their internal physiological clock. Usually, plants determine the length of the day by the transition of the phytochrome pigment from one form to another when the spectral composition of sunlight changes. The "setting" sun is "red" due to the fact that long-wavelength red light is scattered less than blue. There is a lot of red and infrared radiation in this sunset or twilight light, and plants (and maybe animals) feel it.
A person who studies the world is himself a structure that changes over time, and for him the ideas about the past and the future are essentially different. In the past, time acts as a generalized coordinate, and in the future it has properties that depend on how we and other objects behave in the present. If the past is defined, then the future of complex systems is not fully known. As sociologist I.V. Bestuzhev-Lada, "the past can be known, but cannot be changed, and the future can be changed, but cannot be known." The more complex the structure, the greater the number of possible states it can assume at future moments of time. This is the ambiguity of time. In addition, time for an individual, for its species, genus, class, etc. different (time scale). For man it is less, for mankind it is more. The “sense of time” for a living organism is always subjective: quickly, when a person is carried away, slowly, in idleness.
These various forms of time and its impact on the characteristics of a person's life and behavior should be manifested in his appearance and his other properties and qualities. Many psychological studies have unequivocally shown that, depending on the functional state of a person, his own subjective time flows in different ways. The famous test pilot M. Gallay describes a case of studying the phenomenon of flutter during an aircraft flight. The pilot estimated the duration of his actions before the destruction of the aircraft and ejection at 50-55 seconds. However, when the “black box” was deciphered, it turned out that only 7 seconds had passed; for the pilot himself, time slowed down 7 times! Note that for an individual person, time does not act as an independent objective variable (astronomical time), but, on the contrary, as a parameter dependent on the person's state. It is difficult for a person to perceive (and feel!) Time as such (in a sense, it is an abstract concept for him). For living organisms, the flow of absolute time is devoid of reality. We do not perceive time, but the processes and changes taking place during it, including evaluating the sequence of events.
The standard of time for a person is often his own internal time. For example, Buddhist monks, who stay in dark caves for a long time, alone, without astronomical and ordinary earthly time sensors, sense their own time. Psychological research shows that in such cases, people begin to live in their own time, and if this lasted long enough, they could create their own historical chronology.
The study and modeling of physiological time should probably be associated with the formation of a new event-oriented biorhythmology, which takes into account the physiological essence of what is an event for a living organism and its own rhythmic laws. Our physiological age does not depend on how many sunrises and sunsets we have seen during our life. The intensity of life processes is associated with internal time, biological clock. They also control such processes as the volume of the cell nucleus, the frequency of cell division, the intensity of photosynthesis and cellular respiration, the activity of biochemical processes, etc. It is assumed that this biological time can flow in different ways, unevenly, when compared with physical (astronomical) time. However, we note that until now such non-uniformity of time as a whole in the Universe has not been found experimentally.
The synchronized general biorhythm of the body may not coincide with the rhythm of astronomical time. At a young age, the body's cycles are more frequent, and psychologically it seems that astronomical time drags on more slowly, and in old age biological time goes slower and therefore it seems that astronomical time goes faster. Now it is clear why time flows differently for a child and an old person. In the first it is slower, in the second it is faster. A person's sense of time is associated with the emotional coloring of the events taking place in him. Therefore, in childhood, when emotions are stronger, events seem to be longer. Pain lengthens time, happiness - shortens ("happy hours do not watch"). A certain conflict arises between physical and biological time. They say that a woman is as old as she looks; and for a healthy person it does not matter how old he is, it is important how and for how long he feels. Everything is individual!
In general, the health of an organism is determined by the state and the number of its elementary "atoms" - cells. The rate of evolution of cells, their growth and death will determine the lifetime of the organism. In youth, the rate of cell renewal is high; in old age it slows down, the time derivative of the number of new cells is less than zero, as physicists say. Life is characterized by the intensity of cell renewal, and aging slows down the biological time programmed by the very evolution of life. The lifespan of cells is determined by the number of cell divisions specific to each species. For living organisms, there is experimental evidence that the rate of cell division, set by biorhythms, first increases, as the organism develops, reaches its maximum value and then decreases, down to zero, with the natural death of the organism. Cells and organs keep track of time in accordance with the program in the genome.
And “if life has passed intensively, then it seems useful and interesting” (Russian biologist II Mechnikov (1845-1916)). A similar thought was expressed by the French writer and philosopher A. Camus (1913-1966): "Years in youth run rapidly because they are full of events, and in old age they drag on slowly due to the fact that these events are predetermined." Apparently, this allowed L. Landau to justifiably say before his death: "It seems that I had a good life." And for the author, the motto was always programmatic: "Only an intensive exchange of energy with the environment allows me to remain a creative person." The Russian biologist I. I. Arshavsky noted that the more actively and with greater energy consumption the organism lives, the longer the duration of its life.
We also note that random processes, the role of which is great in quantum statistics and biology, can be fully realized only in infinitely long time, and time itself is limited by the existence of the world.