Lysenko's Ghost

Epigenetics and Russia

Loren Graham

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780674969049
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

The Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko became one of the most notorious figures in twentieth-century science after his genetic theories were discredited decades ago. Yet some scientists, even in the West, now claim that discoveries in the field of epigenetics prove that he was right after all. Seeking to get to the bottom of Lysenko's rehabilitation in certain Russian scientific circles, Loren Graham reopens the case, granting his theories an impartial hearing to determine whether new developments in molecular biology validate his claims.In the 1930s Lysenko advanced a "theory of nutrients" to explain plant development, basing his insights on experiments which, he claimed, showed one could manipulate environmental conditions such as temperature to convert a winter wheat variety into a spring variety. He considered the inheritance of acquired characteristics—which he called the "internalization of environmental conditions"—the primary mechanism of heredity. Although his methods were slipshod and his results were never duplicated, his ideas fell on fertile ground during a time of widespread famine in the Soviet Union.Recently, a hypothesis called epigenetic transgenerational inheritance has suggested that acquired characteristics may indeed occasionally be passed on to offspring. Some biologists dispute the evidence for this hypothesis. Loren Graham examines these arguments, both in Russia and the West, and shows how, in Russia, political currents are particularly significant in affecting the debates.

1       THE FRIENDLY SIBERIAN FOXES

This is a new and controversial direction of thought—here we could fall back into Lysenkoism.… The most dangerous possibility is that this direction might undermine genetics itself.

—V. BARTEL’

REMOVING THE PADDED GLOVE protecting my hand from the cold, I reached out to the Siberian fox coming toward me. The fox licked my fingers and lowered itself as if wanting to be petted. I stroked the fox’s sleek back. It responded as would a family dog, moving closer and shifting slightly to receive my full attention. It obviously enjoyed the contact and busily licked my other hand, undeterred by the glove still encasing it. Foxes are normally hostile to humans; this fellow seemed to love them.

The explanation of the almost sixty-year-old experiment that led to this result leads one into questions of science and politics extending from the 1940s to the present day. The controversies surrounding the experiment have never left—just taken on a new intensified form that would have dismayed its initiators. What they hoped to prove they are in danger of disproving, shocking not only themselves but the entire world of biology.

The man who started this experiment was Dmitri Belyaev, a Russian biologist caught in one of the most infamous controversies in science of the past century. Russian biology at the time of Belyaev’s higher education in the 1940s was beset by a great controversy over genetics. A poorly educated and dogmatic agronomist named Trofim Lysenko was challenging genetics as it was known all over the world. He denied that genes were the main carriers of heredity, dismissed molecular biology, and denounced the founders of modern genetics, such as the American Thomas Hunt Morgan, as “bourgeois falsifiers.” He preached a doctrine based on the inheritance of acquired characteristics, the idea that the traits an organism acquires during its lifetime can be passed on to its offspring. His views in 1948 received the imprimatur of Stalin himself and, as a result, the secret police repressed geneticists throughout the Soviet Union. Some were executed, while many others were imprisoned in labor camps, where a significant number died. Lysenko’s most well-known opponent, Nikolai Vavilov, perished of starvation in such a place. Political power had overcome science, almost extinguishing classical genetics in the Soviet Union. Lysenko had triumphed.

Belyaev knew his genetics and firmly believed that Lysenko’s views were false. Working as a young man in the Central Research Laboratory of Fur Breeding in Moscow, he rashly expressed his opposition. He was fired from his job as a result, but perhaps because of his junior status he was not arrested. Belyaev realized that he could not openly practice and research genetics in the Soviet Union at that time. He looked for a way to continue his research without thoroughly compromising his principles. In the 1950s the Soviet government created a new science city in faraway Siberia, near Novosibirsk. The political rulers in Moscow were over two thousand miles away. Attracted not only by the modern facilities but also by the relative freedom the remote location afforded, many talented scientists moved there.¹ They offered quiet shelter to a few geneticists fleeing Lysenkoism. Belyaev was one of them. Other anti-Lysenko biologists also gathered in Novosibirsk.²

Belyaev searched for a topic that was scientifically interesting but not politically dangerous. He felt drawn to the issue of animal domestication. He chose foxes, common in Siberia, and soon acquired several hundred, a population that formed the starting point for his experiments. By itself the domestication of animals did not raise red flags for Lysenko supporters. After all, Charles Darwin had written a book on the subject long before the very word “gene” was even invented. Lysenko sometimes called his approach “creative Darwinism.”³ Domestication of animals was based on artificial selection, a centuries-old practice in animal and plant breeding and one pursued by a Russian horticulturalist educated in the nineteenth century, Ivan Michurin, whom Lysenko much admired. In fact, Lysenko sometimes called his approach “Michurinist biology.”⁴ Surely, the selective breeding of animals was safe research.⁵

Safe, but not compromised. Belyaev believed that by researching the domestication of foxes he could stay loyal to genetics as it was practiced elsewhere instead of to Lysenko’s idiosyncratic views. Belyaev, contrary to Lysenko, remained convinced of the existence and importance of genes; his fox domestication experiment was based on the principles of genes, mutation, recombination, and artificial selection. The inheritance of acquired characteristics that Lysenko emphasized had nothing to do with it. Belyaev did not dream that his experiment might eventually question some of his basic principles.

Belyaev divided the wild foxes he had collected into three groups: the fiercest ones, hostile to all human approach; foxes that did not bite or flee when fed by humans but obviously did not like them; and foxes that showed some interest in humans, if only by whining when they approached. Belyaev then submitted these foxes to strong artificial selection pressure, breeding the least hostile foxes with each other and then, in each generation, continuing to select for breeding those foxes that showed the least hostility and, eventually, the most friendliness. By the sixth generation, a new class of foxes had emerged that Belyaev christened the “domesticated elite.” They licked and sniffed humans like dogs. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of the fox pups were members of this elite class. By the twentieth generation, 35 percent belonged to this class. The foxes in this group were not just very friendly; many had changed physically and had floppy ears and wagging tails. Today, after over forty generations, 70 to 80 percent are in this highest class. In fact, the majority of the foxes became so friendly that Belyaev’s research institute began selling some as household pets, raising money for further experimentation.⁶

Russian geneticist Dmitrii Belyaev with tame silver foxes. (RIA Novosti/Science Source)

Belyaev explained these results quietly in terms of classical genetics. He theorized that he was selecting from a group of foxes that had genetic variation in temperament, progressively increasing the proportion of the friendliest. He assumed that particular genes, acting either alone or in groups, were responsible for this friendly nature.

I visited Belyaev and his fox farm several times. Belyaev was director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, which was located in the science city of Akademgorodok near Novosibirsk. The fox farm itself was out in the countryside, several miles from Belyaev’s office. In 1976 I journeyed out to the farm without Belyaev. There I met the assistants who were in charge of the foxes’ day-to-day care. I asked one, a kindly woman dressed in the country attire of valenki (felt boots), a heavy coat, and a head shawl, why she thought the foxes were so friendly. She replied, “Because we take such good care of them and because we love them. We constantly stroke them, supply them the best food, give all of them names, call them individually by these names, and show our affection for them. They respond by returning our love, and that love becomes hereditary.”

This answer surprised me because it made no reference to genes and was clearly based on the inheritance of acquired characteristics—a doctrine their boss, Belyaev, denied. In fact, it was a view thoroughly in accord with Lysenko’s. After all, Lysenko claimed that he could get cows and their progeny to give more milk by caring for them attentively, keeping their stalls clean, and feeding them copiously. Genetic pedigree meant nothing to Lysenko. It did not seem to mean much to Belyaev’s assistants, either.

I returned to Belyaev’s office and quizzed him on this issue. “Do you know,” I asked, “that some of the members of your staff out at the fox farm are supporters of Lysenko? They believe that the foxes become friendly because of the care they give them, not as a result of genetic selection.” Belyaev laughed and said yes, he knew. “But it is not correct to call them followers of Lysenko,” he continued. “They are simply supporters of the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. It is a mistaken view, but does no harm. In fact, they probably take better care of the foxes than I would, since they attribute to that care a significance that I do not. So they make excellent lab assistants. I want attentive helpers who take good care of the foxes and laboratory facilities.”

Author feeding a domesticated fox in Siberia. (Courtesy of the WGBH Media Library and Archives)

I would remember this conversation years later when the full significance of the new science of epigenetics dawned on me. According to epigeneticists, the effects of an organism’s life experiences can in some instances become heritable, at least for a few generations. Contrary to Belyaev, it appears that the inheritance of acquired characteristics does indeed occur.

A well-known experiment in the West in the early study of epigenetics has similarities to Belyaev’s Siberian fox experiments. Michael Meaney of McGill University has maintained that in certain rat litters, the pups that receive the most licking and grooming from their mothers become adult rats that in turn lavish attention on their own pups, and this continues in future generations.⁷ Meaney proposed that this tendency was a trait connected with gene expression controlled by chemical groups attached to the rats’ DNA.⁸ And these “chemical attachments” resulted, he thought, from behavior—in this case, licking and grooming. Meaney pointed to the possibility of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, obtained in a way highly similar to what the caretakers of the Siberian foxes told me long ago. Instead of a scientific explanation, those caretakers merely said, “We love the foxes and they love us in turn, and this becomes hereditary.”

Does epigenetics help explain the Siberian fox experiment? Could the care the infant foxes received from their caretakers influence the behavior of their progeny? Does the Siberian fox experiment cause us to rethink the question of Lysenko? We do not know complete answers to these questions yet. Much research needs to be done. But these issues are beginning to bother the people who continue the experiment in Siberia today, long after the death of Belyaev in 1985.

In 2007 the Institute of Cytology and Genetics celebrated the ninetieth anniversary of Belyaev’s birth. Celebrating the birth anniversaries of leading scientists is standard practice in Russian science. At such occasions the speakers usually praise the deceased, giving almost scripted and predictably laudatory performances. But several of the speakers at the 2007 Novosibirsk conference referred to “epigenetic inheritance.” Two non-Russian participants, Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, were already well known for claiming that modern biology must make room for the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.⁹ Although this point of view would not disturb the caretaker of the foxes I talked to long ago, it definitely disturbed several of the Russian academically trained geneticists at the conference. After all, they and their teacher Belyaev had struggled bravely against Lysenko and had seen colleagues imprisoned as a result. One observed that the science of epigenetics was provoking new questions about the fox experiment and raising the possibility of “falling back into Lysenkoism”:

The most dangerous issue here is that these new developments may undermine genetics itself. Lysenko said that the conditions of the environment could change everything. Epigenetics approaches this view, maintaining that the change of an organism’s characteristics occurs not under the influence of mutations and recombinations, but thanks to a change in the expression of genes.¹⁰

And he noted that the expression of genes can, according to the epigeneticists, be influenced by the environment.¹¹

The science of heredity is under debate worldwide, especially in the wake of the new science of epigenetics. This scientist’s reaction highlights a key question: If epigenetic research shows that acquired characteristics can be inherited, a doctrine that Lysenko promoted, does that mean Lysenko was right?

2 THE INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS

The concept of the inheritance of acquired characters is a notion that had been held almost universally for well over two thousand years.

—CONWAY ZIRKLE

THE DOCTRINE of the inheritance of acquired characteristics has a long hist...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The Friendly Siberian Foxes
• 2. The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics
• 3. Paul Kammerer, Enfant Terrible of Biology
• 4. The Great Debate about Human Heredity in 1920s Russia
• 5. Lysenko Up Close
• 6. Lysenko’s Biological Views
• 7. Epigenetics
• 8. The Recent Rebirth of Lysenkoism in Russia
• 9. Surprising Effects of the New Lysenkoism
• 10. Anti-Lysenko Russian Supporters of the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index