Dmitri Konstantinowitsch Belyayev
Dmitri Konstantinowitsch Beljajew ( Russian Дмитрий Константинович Беляев ; born July 17, 1917 in Protasovo, Kostroma ; † November 14, 1985 ) was a Russian geneticist .
Life
Belyayev was born as the youngest of four children of pastor Konstantin Pavlovich Belyayev and his wife Evstolija Alexsandrovna. The older children attended high school; his brother Pawel later became an agronomy teacher. After Belyayev had attended the village school for two years, his parents sent him to Moscow in 1925 . There he lived with his brother Nikolai's family and attended the Chvostovskaya High School. His brother's work and environment (a geneticist who was arrested and shot under Stalin ) greatly influenced Belyayev. In 1934 he began studying at the Ivanovo Technical College of Agriculture , which he graduated in 1939. His teachers were the animal geneticists Boris Wassin and Alexander Panin . He then worked on breeding methods and the genetics of fur animals.
From 1941 to 1945 he served as an officer in the Soviet Army during World War II and was wounded twice. After the war he resumed his work in the laboratory for fur farming in Moscow. In the early 1950s he formulated his hypothesis that breeding selection of tameness was the most important factor in the domestication of wild animals. In 1953/54 he began his attempts at breeding foxes at the Institute for Cytology and Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk in Siberia . In 1958 he moved from Moscow to Novosibirsk.
Dmitri Belyayev was Vice President of the Siberian Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences , Chairman of the United Scientific Council on Biological Sciences for Siberia (where he mainly worked with MA Lavretyev) and Director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences from 1959 to 1985, which was the only major genetics institute in the USSR in the 1960s. During this time he made a major contribution to cementing the institute's reputation and promoting the development of genetics as a science in the Soviet Union . For several years he chaired the Scientific Council on Genetics and Rearing of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR , he was Vice-President of the NI Vawilow Society for Genetics and Rearing and a member of the responsible editors of several magazines in the USSR and abroad. He received honorary membership in universities in several countries and from 1978 to 1983 he was President of the International Genetics Federation .
In addition to research and teaching, Belyayev also took on social responsibility. He was re-elected several times as a member of the Novosibirsk Regional City Council and was chairman of the District Council of World War II Veterans there.
For his work and services, Belyayev received the Wawilow Prize , two orders of Lenin , the Order of the October Revolution , the Order of the Red Star and the Order of the Great Patriotic War of the first and second order, as well as other medals.
Scientific work
Selective breeding of foxes
In the 1950s, Dmitri Beljajew and his colleagues carried out breeding experiments with silver foxes ( Vulpes vulpes ) and only selected those animals that showed less shyness and less bite towards humans for further breeding. He eventually obtained a population of foxes that differed markedly from wild-type foxes in both behavior and appearance .
After about ten to twenty generations of controlled breeding, the foxes no longer showed fear of humans and greeted the keepers with wags of their tails and licks of affection. Outward changes were mottled fur, floppy ears and curled tails.
This experiment is an example of the Baldwin Effect .
Scientific importance
During this time, biologists were still trying to find out why dogs have different coat patterns than wolves . Belyayev saw in his research with foxes the possibility of answering this question. With his colleagues, he also examined biochemical parameters and found that the adrenaline levels of the domesticated foxes were significantly lower than those of the wild foxes. This could explain the tame behavior of the foxes, but not the many colors of the furs.
The scientists theorized that by molecular similarity of adrenaline and melanin pigment production could be a connection with respect and that changes - that is reduced - hormone levels by cascade the expression could bring genetic variants to the fore in the wildlife by high adrenaline levels remained suppressed. A function of stress (increased adrenaline level) as a regulatory element in gene expression and thus in evolution was thus recognized.
other topics
Other topics of Belyayev's research were the avoidance of lethal mutations (monohybrid heterosis ), the role of photoperiodism in the fertility stimulation of pigs , acceleration of the mutation of coat colors in mink , radiation-induced mutations of crops, generation of variants of winter cereals especially for Siberia and the Generation of antiviral agents.
In addition to topics on applied genetics, he also published on human nature , the relationship between personality and society , the role of science as an element of human development. B. 1983 at the 15th Congress for Genetics ( New Delhi ) a plenary lecture with the title Genetics, Society and Personality (Eng. Genetics, Society and Personality ).
The scientific education of others was very important to Belyayev. Since 1961 he has been the chairman of the Chair of Cytology and Genetics at the University of Novosibirsk and teaching biology in schools also played a role for him. He published a guide for teachers and in 1985 a biology textbook for secondary schools was published under his leadership.
literature
- VK Shumny: In memory of Dmitri Konstantinovich Belyaev . In: Theor. Appl. Genet. Volume 73, No. 6, 1987, pp. 932-933
- LN Trut, AL Markel ', PM Borodin, SV Argutinskaya, IK Zakharov and VK Shumny: To the 90th Anniversary of Academican Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyaev (1917–1985) . In: Genetics . Volume 43, No. 7, 2007, pp. 869-872 (and Russ. J. of Genet. Volume 43, No. 7, 2007, pp. 717-720)
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Beljajew, Dmitri Konstantinowitsch |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Беляев, Дмитрий Константинович (Russian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian geneticist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 17, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Protasovo, Kostroma |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 14, 1985 |