Lev Aleksandrovich Blumenfeld and Modern Biochemical Physics. “Solvable” and “Unsolvable” Problems

The work is devoted to the analysis and development of the problems formulated by L.A. Blumenfeld, an outstanding representative of Soviet science. This paper discusses the achievements in description of the nature of enzymatic catalysis by the methods of molecular mechanics of proteins and supercomputer-rescued quantum-chemical modeling of the catalytic cycle with demonstration of the determining role of conformational changes in the functional groups of the active center. A theory of prebiological evolution at primary stages is proposed and analyzed in detail; this theory explains the possibility of synthesis and evolution of protopolymers. Evolutionary combinatorics and the possibility of “multiplication” of macromolecules in the processes of polycondensation of monomers are provided by a thermal cycle that overcomes the phase transition point of water (“synthesis–hydrolysis” a process with adsorption of the monomer on the matrix of the primary polymer). One possible way of solving “unsolvable” problems such as “how matter becomes consciousness” is to consider the proposed and analyzed theory of recording and storing neuroinformation based on the kinetic modeling of cholinergic synapses (proton mechanism for recording information).