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.

Origin and spread of human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U7.

Human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U is among the initial maternal founders in Southwest Asia and Europe and one that best indicates matrilineal genetic continuity between late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer groups and present-day populations of Europe. While most haplogroup U subclades are older than 30 thousand years, the comparatively recent coalescence time of the extant variation of haplogroup U7 (~16-19 thousand years ago) suggests that its current distribution is the consequence of more recent dispersal events, despite its wide geographical range across Europe, the Near East and South Asia. Here we report 267 new U7 mitogenomes that - analysed alongside 100 published ones - enable us to discern at least two distinct temporal phases of dispersal, both of which most likely emanated from the Near East.

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.