KMKK_DAK_010 PAVLOV'S DOGS
Current Biology Magazine Volume 13, Issue 4pR117-R119
February 18, 2003 Open Archive
Pavlov's dogs
Abstract
A pilgrimage to the last working place of the behavioral psychologist Ivan Pavlov in Russia led to the discovery of a photograph album full of pictures of the original ‘Pavlov's dogs’. Tim Tully explains how he made this remarkable discovery, and how the photos have inspired the naming of many new mutant fruitflies with defective memory phenotypes.
Eleven years ago, I began a scientific mission with a trip to Russia, to find the names of Pavlov's dogs. My intention was to name Drosophila memory mutants after the dogs. At the time, however, two major impediments lay in the way of this high-minded objective. I didn't have many memory mutants and I could find the name of but one of Pavlov's dogs, Bierka. My mission was to change all that. So in the Spring of 1992, I braved a trip to the Pavlov Institute in Koltushi, a small village outside of St. Petersburg, to rummage through the last place that Pavlov worked. My efforts to identify the dogs failed, and I was ready to accept that their names would remain forever anonymous, when a soft-spoken, lonely woman in an obscure museum nonchalantly handed me 40 photographs of Pavlov's dogs, names and all! Now, more than ten years later, we have completed a large-scale behavioral screen, identifying 60 new memory mutants [1]. Mission complete. Meet some of the namesakes of ‘Pavlov's flies’.
/.../
...I realized that Pavlov must have liked his dogs enough to name them. This seemed like an interesting piece of scientific history, in spite of the more high-minded use I had concocted for the dogs' names.
As mentioned above, my own literature search uncovered only Bierka. So, I wrote my colleague, Ivan Balaban, at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity in Moscow in 1988 to see if he could dig up any more ‘bones’ among Pavlov's original papers. From Pavlovian Wednesdays. Isd. Akad. Nauk., Moscow (1949) vII (protocols of 1933-34years) Balaban uncovered 21 names of Pavlov's dogs. Two of the four memory mutants identified from the Brandeis screen were then appropriately christened, nalyot and golovan[14,15]. Four memory mutants, however, were not enough. For an emergent, behavioral process like memory formation, many genes are likely to be involved, clearly dictating more mutant screening and, accordingly, the likely need for more dog names.
I had just moved to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the Fall of 1991 with high hopes of marshalling the resources for a large-scale mutant screen, when I was invited by Elena Savvateeva (now head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics) and Nicholas Kamyshev (now head of the Laboratory of Comparative Behavioral Genetics) to lecture at the Pavlov Institute in Koltushi. I accepted with relish, knowing that such a trip may be my last chance to find more of Pavlov's dogs. The trip into the recently dissolved Soviet Empire was a study in contrasts. While the physical condition of St. Petersburg was pitiful, my local colleagues were excited by the real prospects of new Western contacts. Travel was slow and tiring; I drank the water without thinking…
Elena and Nicholas were wonderful hosts. I stayed with Elena and her mother, Professor Dr. Valentina Ponomarenko, who then was Head of Nicholas' Laboratory. After watching the troubled look grow on my face over the first few days, she personally boiled my drinking water ‘properly’. Valentina mothered me back to good health and spirits. Elena introduced me to all their colleagues. She patiently explained my mission repeatedly to the Director of the Pavlov Institute, Dr. Professor Vladimir Govyrin, to the Director of Pavlov's Museum in Koltushi, Dr. Valery Bolondinsky, and to countless other colleagues. I rummaged all day. Each night, Nicholas and his ichthyologist friend, Victor Kryuchkov, helped me medicate my daily pining for the lost dogs. The volume of warm collegiality gently helped me to accept the fact that my search had failed.
I resigned myself to sightseeing and spent three full days in the Hermitage, easily the most impressive collection of art and sculpture I've seen. I saw the Winter Palace, the Summer Palace and every other major piece of architecture in St. Petersburg. Then, on the last day of my visit, Elena asked if I might like a private tour of Pavlov's home – Apartment #11, 7th Line on Vasilievsky Island. I was tired of touring and really didn't want to go, but I had to be polite. To my eye, the place was run down. The curator, Dr. Nonna Volkova, was a pleasant, attractive woman, however, and insisted with religious fervor that everything – even the pen on his desk – has been left exactly as the day Pavlov died. Clearly, this place was not visited often; Nonna moved slowly through those few rooms. Time crawled. At some point during a spacey nod at a painting on the wall, I heard Elena explain my mission to Nonna. “Well”, she replied, “if you want to hear about Pavlov's dogs, we can sit down to some tea and biscuits after the tour!” Time stopped.
Eventually, we did sit down at the kitchen table. Nonna made tea and laid out our biscuits. Then, without a word, she went to a hall cabinet, pulled out a photo album and handed it to me. Inside were photographs of Pavlov's dogs. Forty of them, with Russian names inscribed below! In response to my jaw-flapping silence, Nonna happily remarked that Pavlov's students gave him this photo album on his 83rd birthday. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. I hugged Nonna more than once, explaining how these dogs would become a piece of scientific history. She was fascinated that I might find Drosophila genes involved with Pavlovian memory. As I carefully snapped pictures, she came to understand that these motley dogs were a canine treasure to me. Then, Nonna did something unforgettable. She let me wear Pavlov's evening tophat – knowing perhaps that I would be inspired to tell the story someday. I was.
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