Biochemistry

Biochemistry (біохемія or біохімія; biokhemiia or biokhimiia). Science dealing with the chemical composition of living organisms and the chemical processes connected with their vital functions. Biochemistry began to develop in Ukraine in the 19th century at Kharkiv University. In 1847 O. Khodnev wrote a textbook on the subject. Oleksander Danylevsky published the first biochemical periodical to appear in the Russian Empire, Fiziologicheskii sbornik (Physiological Collection, 1888–91). V. Gulevich and Aleksandr Palladin investigated the biochemistry of plants. At Kyiv University Volodymyr Kistiakovsky studied glycogen. At Vienna University Ivan Ya. Horbachevsky, a Ukrainian, synthesized uric acid in 1882. In the 1900s biochemical research was taken up by the chemistry departments of medical faculties. In the 1920s a number of biochemistry departments were created within the biological faculties of the higher educational institutions, and scientific research institutes were established. In 1925 the Institute of Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR was founded. The Association of Physiologists, Biochemists, and Pharmacologists, which had branches in the larger cities, promoted the development of biochemistry.

Research publications by Ukrainian biochemists have covered all the main areas of biochemistry. Among the better-known contributors have been Aleksandr Palladin, Rostyslav Chahovets, Volodymyr Belitser, Oleksander Nahorny, Volodymyr Zosymovych, Ivan Bulankin, T. Saienko, S. Serebriany, Leonid M. Lytvynenko, K. Leutsky, Jakub Parnas, Platon Kostiuk, Valerii Lishko, D. Ferdman, and V. Vendt. They investigated the biochemistry of protein, ferments, vitamins, muscle tissue, the nervous system, and hormones (Vasyl Komisarenko and Aron Utevsky). Maksym Huly, in his monograph Osnovnye metabolicheskie tsikly (The Basic Metabolic Cycles, 1968), summed up the research on metabolism. The nucleic acids DNA and RNA, which are the central subject of biochemistry today and the key to the mechanism of heredity and the synthesis of protein, have been studied by Hennadii Matsuka, Serhii Hershenzon, E. Skvyrska, O. Chepinoha, I. Kok, and others.

At the turn of the century Yevhen Votchal (Kyiv Polytechnical Institute), Arkadii Okanenko, Dmytro Tovstolis, and others devoted themselves to the biochemistry of plants. Since the 1920s Mykola H. Kholodny (Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR), M. Liubynsky, Volodymyr Liubymenko, Ye. Buslova, and Andrii Kuzmenko, and in later times Andrii Manoryk, Petro Vlasiuk, V. Lobov, Dmytro Hrodzinsky, A. Okanenko, P. Mushak, L. Einor, V. Myroniuk, N. Tupyk, S. Pyrozhenko, and many others, have studied the biochemistry of transpiration, photosynthesis, growth and development, and so on. The department of the biochemistry of the lower plants, which was established at the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1958, carries on research on the lower water weeds. The results have been summed up in a monograph by O. Sudina and others, Biokhimiia syn'ozelenykh vodorostei (The Biochemistry of Blue-Green Algae). E. Rashba and I. Zakharova produced monographs on mushrooms and micro-organisms.

Biochemical research is currently conducted at many scientific research institutes. The most important of these are the institutes—the Institute of Biochemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of UKraine, the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the Institute for Problems of Oncology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and the Institute of Physiology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine—and the Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Endocrinology and Metabolism under the Health Ministry of Ukraine.

Ukraïns'kyi biokhimichnyi zhurnal has been appearing since 1926, first in Ukrainian and after 1978 in Russian. A periodical collection entitled Biokhimiia zhivotnykh i cheloveka (The Biochemistry of Animals and Man) was also published.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rozvytok nauky v Ukraïns'kii RSR za sorok rokiv (Kyiv 1957)
Istoriia AN URSR (Kyiv 1967)
Hulyi, M. ‘Biokhimiia,’ in Istoriia AN URSR (Kyiv 1979)

Edvard Zharsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]