|
Dmitri Konstantinovich Belyaev (Russian: Дмитрий Константинович Беляев, 17 July 1917 – 14 November 1985) was a Russian geneticist and academician who served as director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics (IC&G) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, from 1959 to 1985. His decades-long effort to breed domesticated foxes has been described by the New York Times as "arguably the most extraordinary breeding experiment ever conducted." A 2010 article in Scientific American stated that Belyaev "may be the man most responsible for our understanding of the process by which wolves were domesticated into our canine companions." Beginning in the 1950s, in order to uncover the genetic basis of the distinctive behavioral and physiological attributes of domesticated animals, Belyaev and his team spent decades breeding the wild silver fox (''Vulpes vulpes'') and selecting for reproduction only those individuals in each generation that showed the least fear of humans.〔 After several generations of controlled breeding, a majority of the silver foxes no longer showed any fear of humans and often wagged their tails and licked their human caretakers to show affection. They also began to display spotted coats, floppy ears, curled tails, as well as other physical attributes often found in domesticated animals, thus confirming Belyaev’s hypothesis that both the behavioral and physical traits of domesticated animals could be traced to “a collection of genes that conferred a propensity to tameness—a genotype that the foxes perhaps shared with any species that could be domesticated."〔 Belyaev, who especially during the early years of his experiment was risking his life by defying the anti-Darwinian, anti-Mendelian Soviet scientific establishment, has been recognized in recent years by major scientific journals as a pioneering figure in modern genetics. ==Early life and education== Belyaev was born on July 17, 1917, in Protasovo, a town in the Russian province of Kostroma. He was his family’s fourth and youngest son. His father, Konstantin Pavlovich, was a priest. His brother Nikolai, who was 18 years his senior, was a prominent geneticist who worked with Sergei Chetverikov (1880-1959), a pioneer of population genetics. "It was his brother's influence that caused him to have this special interest in genetics," Belyaev’s protégé, Lyudmilla Trut, later said. Both Belyaev brothers were Darwinists and believers in Mendelian genetics. At the time Belyaev came of age, however, life was dangerous in the Soviet Union for genetics with such views, because the Stalinist regime supported the scientific theories of agronomist Trofim Lysenko and outlawed research inspired by the rival views of Gregor Mendel. As Trut recalled, "genetics was considered fake science." Indeed, under the rule of Stalin, leading geneticists who believed in Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics were considered enemies of the state. Several of them were sent to prison, and at least one, Nikolai Vavilov, was sentenced to death. Nikolai Belyaev was arrested in August 1937, and was executed without a trial on November 10 of that year. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyaev」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|