Motoo Kimura (木村資生 Kimura Motoo), (November 13, 1924 - November 13, 1994) was a Japanese biologist best known for introducing the neutral theory of molecular evolution in 1968^[1] . Events 1002 - English king Ethelred orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St Year 1924 ( MCMXXIV) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Events 1002 - English king Ethelred orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St Year 1994 ( MCMXCIV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display full 1994 Gregorian calendar) The neutral theory of molecular evolution is an influential theory that was introduced with provocative effect by Motoo Kimura in the late 1960s and early 1970s He became one of the most influential theoretical population geneticists. Population genetics is the study of the Allele frequency distribution and change under the influence of the four evolutionary forces Natural selection, Genetic He is remembered in genetics for his innovative use of diffusion equations to calculate the probability of fixation in time to fixation of beneficial, deleterious, or neutral alleles. The diffusion equation is a Partial differential equation which describes density fluctuations in a material undergoing Diffusion. An allele (ˈæliːl (UK /əˈliːl/ (US (from the Greek αλληλος allelos, meaning each other) is one member of a pair or series of different forms ^[2] Combining theoretical population genetics with molecular evolution data, he also developed the neutral theory of molecular evolution in which genetic drift is the main force changing allele frequencies^[3]. Population genetics is the study of the Allele frequency distribution and change under the influence of the four evolutionary forces Natural selection, Genetic Molecular evolution is the process of evolution at the scale of DNA, RNA, and Proteins Molecular evolution emerged as a scientific field in the 1960s as The neutral theory of molecular evolution is an influential theory that was introduced with provocative effect by Motoo Kimura in the late 1960s and early 1970s In Population genetics, genetic drift is the accumulation of random events that change the makeup of a gene pool slightly but often compound over time An allele (ˈæliːl (UK /əˈliːl/ (US (from the Greek αλληλος allelos, meaning each other) is one member of a pair or series of different forms Frequency is a measure of the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit Time. James F. Crow, himself a renowned population geneticist, considers Kimura to be one of the two greatest evolutionary geneticists, along with Gustave Malécot, after the great trio of the modern synthesis (Haldane, Wright, Fisher). James F Crow (born 1916 is Professor Emeritus of Genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gustave Malécot ( December 28 1911 &mdash November 1998 was a French Mathematician whose work on Heredity had a strong influence John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS ( 5 November 1892 &ndash 1 December 1964) known as Jack (but who used 'J Sewall Green Wright ( December 21, 1889 – March 3, 1988) was an American Geneticist Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, FRS ( 17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was an English Statistician, Evolutionary ^[4]

Life and work

Kimura was born in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture. is a city located in Aichi Prefecture on the main island of Japan. WikipediaWikiProject Japanese prefectures for guidelines --> is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region. From an early age he was very interested in botany, though he also excelled at mathematics (teaching himself geometry and other maths during a lengthy convalescence due to food poisoning). Foodborne illness (also foodborne disease) is any Illness resulting from the consumption of food After entering a selective high school in Nagoya, Kimura focused on plant morphology and cytology; he worked in the laboratory of M. is the third-largest incorporated city and the fourth most populous urban area in Japan. Kumazawa studying the chromosome structure of lilies. Eukaryotic chromosome structure refers to the levels of packaging from the raw DNA molecules to the chromosomal structures seen during Metaphase in The Liliaceae, or the lily family, is a family of Monocotyledons in the order Liliales. With Kumazawa, he also discovered how to connect his interests in botany and mathematics: biometry. Biostatistics (a Portmanteau word made from biology and statistics sometimes referred to as biometry or biometrics) is the application of Statistics ^[5]

Due to World War II, Kimura left high school early to enter Kyoto Imperial University in 1944. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including or is a major national university in Kyoto, Japan. It is the second oldest university in Japan and formerly one of the Imperial Universities of On the advice of the prominent geneticist Hitoshi Kihara, Kimura entered the botany program rather than cytology because the former, in the Faculty of Science rather than Agriculture, allowed him to avoid military duty. He joined Kihara's laboratory after the war, where he studied the introduction of foreign chromosomes into plants and learned the foundations of population genetics. In 1949, Kimura joined the National Institute of Genetics in Mishima. In 1953 he published his first population genetics paper (which would eventually be very influential), describing a "stepping stone" model for population structure that could treat more complex patterns of immigration than Sewall Wright's earlier "island model". Sewall Green Wright ( December 21, 1889 – March 3, 1988) was an American Geneticist After meeting visiting American geneticist Duncan McDonald (part of Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission), Kimura arranged to enter graduate school at Iowa State College in summer 1953 to study with J. L. Lush. The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC was a commission established in the spring of 1948 in accordance with a presidential directive from Harry S The Iowa State University of Science and Technology, more commonly known as Iowa State University (ISU is a public land-grant and space-grant university Jay Laurence Lush ( Shambaugh Iowa -) was a pioneering animal Geneticist who made important contributions to livestock breeding ^[5]

Kimura soon found Iowa State College too restricting; he moved to the University of Wisconsin to work on stochastic models with James F. Crow and join a strong intellectual community of like-minded geneticists, including Newton Morton and most significantly, Sewall Wright. James F Crow (born 1916 is Professor Emeritus of Genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sewall Green Wright ( December 21, 1889 – March 3, 1988) was an American Geneticist Near the end of his graduate study, Kimura gave a paper at the 1955 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium; though few were able to understand it (both because of mathematical complexity and Kimura's English pronunciation) it received strong praise from Wright and later J. B. S. Haldane. The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL is a private non-profit institution with research programs focusing on Cancer, Neurobiology, Plant genetics, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS ( 5 November 1892 &ndash 1 December 1964) known as Jack (but who used 'J His accomplishments at Wisconsin included a general model for genetic drift, which could accommodate multiple alleles, selection, migration, and mutations, as well as some work based on R. A. Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection. Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, FRS ( 17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was an English Statistician, Evolutionary In Population genetics, R A Fisher 's fundamental Theorem of Natural selection was originally stated as "The rate of increase He also built on the work of Wright with the Fokker-Planck equation by introducing the Kolmogorov backward equation to population genetics, allowing the calculation of the probability of a gene to become fixed in a population. The Fokker–Planck equation describes the Time evolution of the Probability density function of the position of a particle and can be generalized to other observables The Kolmogorov backward equation (KBE and its adjoint the Kolmogorov forward equation (KFE are Partial differential equations (PDE that arise in the theory In Population genetics, fixation occurs when every individual within a Population has the same Allele at a particular locus. He received his PhD in 1956, before returning to Japan (where he would remain for the rest of his life, at the National Institute of Genetics). ^[5]

Kimura worked on a wide spectrum of theoretical population genetics problems, many of them in collaboration with Takeo Maruyama. He introduced the "infinite allele" and "infinite site" models for the study of genetic drift, both of which would be used widely as the field of molecular evolution grew alongside the number of available peptide and genetic sequences. In Population genetics, genetic drift is the accumulation of random events that change the makeup of a gene pool slightly but often compound over time Molecular evolution is the process of evolution at the scale of DNA, RNA, and Proteins Molecular evolution emerged as a scientific field in the 1960s as Peptide sequence or amino acid sequence is the order in which Amino acid residues connected by Peptide bonds lie in the chain in Peptides A DNA sequence or genetic sequence is a succession of letters representing the Primary structure of a real or hypothetical DNA Molecule He also created the "ladder model" that could be applied to electrophoresis studies where homologous proteins differ by whole units of charge. Electrophoresis is the most well-known electrokinetic phenomenon. In Evolutionary biology, homology has come to mean any similarity between characters that is due to their shared ancestry. He also contributed an important review article on the ongoing controversy over genetic load in 1961. In Population genetics, genetic load or genetic burden is a measure of the cost of lost alleles due to Selection ( selectional load) or Mutation

1968 marked a turning point in Kimura's career. In that year he introduced the neutral theory of molecular evolution, the idea that, at the molecular level, the large majority of genetic change is neutral with respect to natural selection—making genetic drift a primary factor in evolution^[6]. The neutral theory of molecular evolution is an influential theory that was introduced with provocative effect by Motoo Kimura in the late 1960s and early 1970s Natural selection is the process by which favorable Heritable traits become more common in successive Generations of a Population of In Population genetics, genetic drift is the accumulation of random events that change the makeup of a gene pool slightly but often compound over time eVolution is the third Album by eLDee, it was due to be released in 2008 The field of molecular biology was expanding rapidly, and there was growing tension between advocates of the expanding reductionist field and scientists in organismal biology, the traditional domain of evolution. Molecular biology is the study of Biology at a molecular level The neutral theory was immediately controversial, receiving support from many molecular biologists and attracting opposition from many evolutionary biologists (though with plenty of divergence from this pattern on both sides, especially among those who studied the theory seriously).

Kimura would spend most of the rest of his life developing and defending the neutral theory. As James F. Crow put it, "much of Kimura's early work turned out to be pre-adapted for use in the quantitative study of neutral evolution. In Evolutionary biology, preadaptation describes a situation where an organism uses a preexisting anatomical structure inherited from an ancestor for a potentially unrelated "^[5]. As new experimental techniques and genetic knowledge became available, Kimura expanded the scope of the neutral theory and created mathematical methods for testing it against the available evidence. In 1973, his student Tomoko Ohta developed a more general version of the theory, the "nearly neutral theory", that could account for high volumes of slightly deleterious mutations. Tomoko Ohta ( born 7 September 1933) is a Japanese scientist working on Molecular evolution. The nearly neutral theory of molecular evolution is a modification of the Neutral theory of molecular evolution that accounts for slightly advantageous or deleterious Mutations Kimura produced a monograph on the neutral theory in 1983, The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution, and also worked to promote the theory through popular writing. The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution is an influential Monograph written in 1983 by Japanese Evolutionary biologist Motoo Kimura Though difficult to test against alternative selection-centered hypotheses, the neutral theory has become part of modern approaches to molecular evolution. ^[7]

In 1992, Kimura received the Darwin Medal from the Royal Society, and the following year he was made a Foreign Member. The Darwin Medal is given by the Royal Society every even year for "work of acknowledged distinction in the broad area of Biology in which Charles Darwin The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, known simply as The Royal Society, is a Learned society for science that was founded in 1660 He was married to Hiroko Kimura. They had one child, a son, Akio, and had a granddaughter, Hanako. ^[8]

See also

• History of biology
• History of evolutionary thought
• History of molecular biology
• Molecular evolution

References

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