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
(china.org.cn by Wang Qian, July 8, 2002)
