Lysenkoism Against Genetics: The Meeting of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences of August 1948, Its Background, Causes, and Aftermath.

Progress in genetics and evolutionary biology in the young Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was hindered in the 1930s by the agronomist Trofim Lysenko, who believed that acquired traits are inherited, claimed that heredity can be changed by "educating" plants, and denied the existence of genes. Lysenko was supported by Communist Party elites. Lysenko termed his set of ideas and agricultural techniques "Michurinism," after the name of the plant breeder Ivan Michurin, but they are currently known as Lysenkoism. Although Michurinism opposed biological science, Lysenko took up one academic position after another. In 1929, Nikolai Vavilov founded the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences and became its head; it directed the development of sciences underpinning plant and animal breeding in the Soviet Union. Vavilov was dismissed in 1935 and later died in prison, while Lysenko occupied his position. The triumph of Lysenkoism became complete and genetics was fully defeated in August 1948 at a session of the academy headed by Lysenko. The session was personally directed by Joseph Stalin and marked the USSR's commitment to developing a national science, separated from the global scientific community. As a result, substantial losses occurred in Soviet agriculture, genetics, evolutionary theory, and molecular biology, and the transmission of scientific values and traditions between generations was interrupted. This article reviews the ideological, political, economic, social, cultural, personal, moral, and ethical factors that influenced the August 1948 session, and its immediate and later consequences. We also outline current attempts to revise the role of the August session and whitewash Lysenko.

Association between alcohol and cardiovascular disease: Mendelian randomisation analysis based on individual participant data.

OBJECTIVE: To use the rs1229984 variant in the alcohol dehydrogenase 1B gene (ADH1B) as an instrument to investigate the causal role of alcohol in cardiovascular disease. DESIGN: Mendelian randomisation meta-analysis of 56 epidemiological studies. PARTICIPANTS: 261 991 individuals of European descent, including 20 259 coronary heart disease cases and 10 164 stroke events. Data were available on ADH1B rs1229984 variant, alcohol phenotypes, and cardiovascular biomarkers. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Odds ratio for coronary heart disease and stroke associated with the ADH1B variant in all individuals and by categories of alcohol consumption. RESULTS: Carriers of the A-allele of ADH1B rs1229984 consumed 17.2% fewer units of alcohol per week (95% confidence interval 15.6% to 18.9%), had a lower prevalence of binge drinking (odds ratio 0.78 (95% CI 0.73 to 0.84)), and had higher abstention (odds ratio 1.27 (1.21 to 1.34)) than non-carriers. Rs1229984 A-allele carriers had lower systolic blood pressure (-0.88 (-1.19 to -0.56) mm Hg), interleukin-6 levels (-5.2% (-7.8 to -2.4%)), waist circumference (-0.3 (-0.6 to -0.1) cm), and body mass index (-0.17 (-0.24 to -0.10) kg/m(2)). Rs1229984 A-allele carriers had lower odds of coronary heart disease (odds ratio 0.90 (0.84 to 0.96)). The protective association of the ADH1B rs1229984 A-allele variant remained the same across all categories of alcohol consumption (P=0.83 for heterogeneity). Although no association of rs1229984 was identified with the combined subtypes of stroke, carriers of the A-allele had lower odds of ischaemic stroke (odds ratio 0.83 (0.72 to 0.95)). CONCLUSIONS: Individuals with a genetic variant associated with non-drinking and lower alcohol consumption had a more favourable cardiovascular profile and a reduced risk of coronary heart disease than those without the genetic variant. This suggests that reduction of alcohol consumption, even for light to moderate drinkers, is beneficial for cardiovascular health.

Hazardous alcohol consumption is associated with increased levels of B-type natriuretic peptide: evidence from two population-based studies.

Russia has very high mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD), with evidence that heavy drinking may play a role. To throw further light on this association we have studied the association of alcohol with predictors of CVD risk including B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP). Levels of BNP increase primarily in response to abnormal cardiac chamber wall stretch which can occur both as a result of atherosclerosis as well as due to other types of damage to the myocardium. No previous population-based studies have investigated the association with alcohol. We analysed cross-sectional data on drinking behaviour in 993 men aged 25-60 years from the Izhevsk Family Study 2 (IFS2), conducted in the Russian city of Izhevsk in 2008-2009. Relative to non-drinkers, men who drank hazardously had an odds ratio (OR) of being in the top 20 % of the BNP distribution of 4.66 (95 % CI 2.13, 10.19) adjusted for age, obesity, waist-hip ratio, and smoking. Further adjustment for class of hypertension resulted in only slight attenuation of the effect, suggesting that this effect was not secondary to the influence of alcohol on blood pressure. In contrast hazardous drinking was associated with markedly raised ApoA1 and HDL cholesterol levels, but had little impact on levels of ApoB and LDL cholesterol. Similar but less pronounced associations were found in the Belfast (UK) component of the PRIME study conducted in 1991. These findings suggest that the association of heavy drinking with increased risk of cardiovascular disease may be partly due to alcohol-induced non-atherosclerotic damage to the myocardium.

Genetic variability of 15 autosomal STR loci in Russian populations.

Allele frequencies for 15 STRs (CSF1PO, D3S1358, D5S818, D7S820, D8S1179, D13S317, D16S539, D18S51, D21S11, FGA, Penta D, Penta E, THO1, TPOX, and vWA) in the PowerPlex 16 System (Promega Corporation) were assessed in 386 individuals from five Russian urban populations. No significant between-population differences in frequencies and molecular variance of 15 microsatellites were revealed. For all 15 loci, the combined matching probability is 3.19 x 10(-18) and the power of exclusion is 99.99989%.

Refined geographic distribution of the oriental ALDH2*504Lys (nee 487Lys) variant.

Mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2) is one of the most important enzymes in human alcohol metabolism. The oriental ALDH2*504Lys variant functions as a dominant negative, greatly reducing activity in heterozygotes and abolishing activity in homozygotes. This allele is associated with serious disorders such as alcohol liver disease, late onset Alzheimer disease, colorectal cancer, and esophageal cancer, and is best known for protection against alcoholism. Many hundreds of papers in various languages have been published on this variant, providing allele frequency data for many different populations. To develop a highly refined global geographic distribution of ALDH2*504Lys, we have collected new data on 4,091 individuals from 86 population samples and assembled published data on a total of 80,691 individuals from 366 population samples. The allele is essentially absent in all parts of the world except East Asia. The ALDH2*504Lys allele has its highest frequency in Southeast China, and occurs in most areas of China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and Indochina with frequencies gradually declining radially from Southeast China. As the indigenous populations in South China have much lower frequencies than the southern Han migrants from Central China, we conclude that ALDH2*504Lys was carried by Han Chinese as they spread throughout East Asia. Esophageal cancer, with its highest incidence in East Asia, may be associated with ALDH2*504Lys because of a toxic effect of increased acetaldehyde in the tissue where ingested ethanol has its highest concentration. While the distributions of esophageal cancer and ALDH2*504Lys do not precisely correlate, that does not disprove the hypothesis. In general the study of fine scale geographic distributions of ALDH2*504Lys and diseases may help in understanding the multiple relationships among genes, diseases, environments, and cultures.

Genes related to the metabolism of nutrients in the Kola Sami population.

OBJECTIVES: The environmental and life-style conditions of the Kola Sami could have influenced the population-specific frequencies of the AGXTProIILeu allele, and certain alleles of APOE and LCT genes, involved respectively, in the metabolism of animal proteins, lipids and milk sugar. Study Design. DNA samples were collected from the Sami population of Lovozero settlement (Murmansk Region) in 2005. METHODS: The analysis of the traditional diet of the Kola Sami was made using the data of ethnographic studies conducted in the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Frequencies of the AGXT ProllLeu, APOE*e4 alleles and LCT gene CC w9 genotype were defined by molecular-genetic analysis. RESULTS: The specificity of the Kola Sami gene pool is in the lower frequency of APOE*e4 allele compared with the Sami of Finland (0.205 and 0.310, respectively) and when compared with other groups (except the Skolt) in the higher frequency of hypolactasia conditioned by the CC(-13910) genotype of the LCT gene (0.484). CONCLUSIONS: The high prevalence of the AGXT allele T bearers among Kola Sami (0.273) does not contradict the hypothesis of the adaptive role this allele plays in populations with a traditionally high intake of meat.

Activity of disaccharidases in arctic populations: evolutionary aspects disaccharidases in arctic populations.

Disorders of dietary sugar assimilation occur more often among native people of the Arctic then in temperate climate inhabitants. It is hypothesized that the limited variety of natural exogenous sugars in the Arctic, and their low content in the traditional diets of native northerners in accordance with a "protein-lipid" type of metabolism weakened selection, favoring diversity of disaccharidase enzymes.