A young scientist from
Kunming Institute
of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Zhang
Yaping, has received the third Biodiversity Leadership Award,
becoming the first Asian scholar to be so honored.
The awards are international top honors especially set for this new
emerging science. Biodiversity Leadership Awards are jointly
granted by the Bay Foundation and the Josephine
Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation. These two foundations
set up the Biodiversity Leadership Awards for individual in 1995
together with ten famous institutes of biodiversity research
including Harvard University, the American Museum of Natural
History, Yale University, Missouri Botanical Garden, Marine
Biological Laboratory (Massachusetts), the Salk Institute for
Biological Studies, Santa Fe Institute, Santiago Zoo Association
and the Wildlife Conservation Society. Issued once three years,
each award-winner will be given US$180,000 in order to commend
his/her achievements made in the protection of, and research into
biodiversity. Three people were honored in 1996, five in 1999 and
the same number this time.
Zhang Yaping was born in May 1965 in Zhaotong City of southwest
China's Yunnan Province. He gained his Bachelor degree from Fudan
University in 1986 and worked for a Doctorate under the
instruction of Shi Liming, a late academician of Kunming Institute
of Zoology of the CAS, from 1986 to 1991. He studied the molecular
evolution and hereditary diversity of animals in the Center for
Reproduction of Endangered Species of Santiago from 1992 to 1994.
He has been engaged in research into molecular evolution and
genetic diversity since he returned to China in 1995. At present,
he is the deputy chief of Kunming Institute of Zoology of the CAS
and dean of the Animal Hereditary Committee of the Genetics
Association of China.
Since the middle of the 1980s, he has devoted himself to research
into the evolutionary history and hereditary diversity of humans
and animals. He and his collaborators made a systematic research
into the molecular level on the growth of some important species
including giant pandas, lesser pandas, bears as well as primates,
and clarified some difficulties in the system and in the evolution
of these species. Besides, they set up the largest animal DNA bank
in China. Based on this, they made systematic study on the
hereditary diversity of some endangered wild animals including
panda, golden monkey, sloth monkey, argali, slope deer and
pangolin, and conducted comparative studies on some non-endangered
animals. These studies are conducive to disclosing the relationship
between hereditary diversity of animals and endangered species,
therefore providing scientific evidence for enacting an efficient
protection plan.
He
studied and disclosed the origins and hereditary diversity of the
main domestic animals, including pig, cow, sheep, cock, and dog. He
also carried out research on the genetic diversity of different
ethnic groups of China and provided new clues for establishing the
origins of the Chinese and the extension of population as well as
the history of migration. These are conducive to understanding the
origin of some disease-related genes as well as their significance
in evolution. His studies of genetic diversity revealed the
relationship between gene variation and its structure as well as
its significance in the evolution of animals.
More than 60 academic papers of Zhang Yaping have been published by
international scientific journals including Nature,
Science, Nature Genetics, PNAS,
Am.J.Hum.Genet, and 10 papers were published by some
domestic scientific journals.
Zhang Yaping has received the Young Scientist Award of China and
Sci-Tech Award for Young Chinese. His research team was selected as
the first batch of innovative research groups of the National Natural
Sciences Foundation of China in 2001.
(china.org.cn by Wang Qian, July 8, 2002)