Evolutionary Biology at Belyaev Conference – 2017

Current collection continues the series of BioMed Central special post-conference issues presenting the highlights from the set of conferences on bioinformatics and systems biology held in Novosibirsk and Moscow (Russia) in 2017. This thematic issue of BMC Evolutionary Biology issue cover the papers presented at Young Scientists School “Systems Biology and Bioinformatics 2017” (SBB-2017) and Belyaev memorial conference “Belyaev Readings 2017” (BR-2017). Previously published special issues of BMC Evolutionary Biology and BMC Genomics covered the proceeding of BGRS\SB-2016 conference and SBB2015 School in Novosibirsk [1–4] as well as BGRS\SB-2014 event (https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/ supplements/volume-15-supplement-12). In it important to note that Year 2017 marks the 100th anniversary since birth of Full Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Professor Dmitry K. Belyaev (1917–1985), an outstanding scientist, evolutionist and geneticist. In view of this memorable date, the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ICG SB RAS) held international Belyaev Conference on Genetics and Evolution (Novosibirsk, August 7–10, 2017 http://conf.bionet.ns c.ru/belyaev100/en). Back in 1950s, Russian (Soviet) geneticist Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyayev embarked on a journey to turn aggressive, wily silver fox into a domestic animal as friendly and tail-wagging as a dog. Belyaev was inspired by Darwin’s early observations on similarity of morphologic and physiologic changes observed in various domestic animals. Hence, he hypothesized that domestication is, in fact, a selection for disposition toward humans and, therefore, it should involve the changes in regulatory genes governing the behavior, the stress and the metabolism of sex hormones. As a result, a unique, world-famous tame fox population was generated. Belyaev demonstrated that the selection for human-friendly demeanor disrupts physiological and morphological systems of silver fox, thus, shifting the phenotype to that similar to the dogs and other now-tamed animals. With that, Belyaev opened up a totally new chapter in the theory of morphogenetic processes that explores interactions between two main factors in evolution: variability and selection. The results of a breathtaking experiment with thousands of animals led Belyaev to postulate a very special form of directional, destabilizing selection taking place in domestication. It destabilizes regulatory systems underlying ontogenesis and, as a consequence, sharply increases the rates at which new phenotypic forms emerge. To highlight the significance of fox domestication experiments performed at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics SB RAS in Novosibirsk, the unique bronze monument to Academician D. K. Belyaev was built by collective efforts near the Institute, where he served as a Founding Director (http://icg.nsc.ru/belyaev100/en/ monument/). The tamed fox gives the Professor a paw and wags the tail (Fig. 1). In 2017, “Vavilov Journal of Selection and Breeding” published a series of memoirs publications about Prof. Belyaev (http://vavilov.elpub.ru/jour/issue/view/32/show Toc). The article by Prof. V. K. Shumny [5] tells the history of Belyaev’s life, while other publications discuss importance of Belyaev’s work on the theory of evolution and domestication [6, 7]. Current issue of BMC Evolutionary Biology presents works describing evolutionary insights derived from observations and experiments with a range of lifeforms as large as the whales and as small as the microbes, uncovering novel adaptations. Alexey A. Moskalev and co-authors [8] consider the problems of aging and longevity through the prism of * Correspondence: orlov@bionet.nsc.ru Institute of Cytology and Genetics SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia Full list of author information is available at the end of the article