In 1903 Koltsov proposed that the shape of cells was determined by a network of tubules forming a skeleton which was later termed as the cytoskeleton. He saw the role of gel-sol transitions in the cytoplasm as key mechanisms for the cell structure. In 1927 Koltsov proposed that inherited traits would be inherited via a "giant hereditary molecule" which would be made up of "two mirror strands that would replicate in a semi-conservative fashion using each strand as a template". Koltsov used the expression omnis molecula ex molecula (every molecule comes from another molecule) based on Virchow's idea that all cells came from other cells. These ideas were confirmed to have been accurate in 1953 when James D. Watson and Francis Crick described the structure of DNA. Watson and Crick had apparently not heard of Koltsov. US geneticist Richard Goldschmidt wrote about him: "There was the brilliant Nikolai Koltsov, probably the best Russian zoologist of the last generation, an enviable, unbelievably cultured, clear-thinking scholar, admired by everybody who knew him". He also suggested that electrical forces were involved in intracellular movement. He termed it as cataphoresis. Legacy Koltsovo, a small municipality in Novosibirsk Oblast, in 2003 obtained the status of the Science town of the Russian Federation and was named after Nikolai Koltsov. References 1872 births 1940 deaths Deaths by poisoning Russian biologists Russian geneticists Soviet biologists 20th-century biologists Soviet geneticists Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Corresponding Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925) Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Academicians of the VASKhNIL Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Burials at Vvedenskoye Cemetery