Liu Yun has worked hard all his life and achieved fruitful results, but the most well-known is that he developed the heterologous tetraploid carp and carp for the first time in the world.
At 8 o'clock every day, the "click" sound of Academician Liu Jun's crutch touching the ground will sound in the biology research room of the College of Life Sciences of Hunan Normal University, and he will enter the biology research room, habitually check the laboratory equipment, water and electricity supply and his old friend , fish, and wait until everything is normal, and then begin to correct student papers and consult literature. But from January 21, 2015, he will no longer be heard here, and he will no longer be seen here, as is familiar to teachers and students.
Hunan is known as the "hometown of fish and rice", with Yuan Longping in rice and Liu Yun in fish. Yuan Longping solved the problem of food and clothing for Chinese, and Liu Yun asked Chinese to have an extra fish on the table. At 5:07 a.m. on January 21, Liu Jun, a member of the Communist Party of China, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a national-level expert with outstanding contributions, a former vice president of Hunan Normal University, a member of the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and the former vice chairman of the Hunan Provincial Association for Science and Technology, died in Changsha at the age of 86 due to ineffective medical treatment.
At the "Academic Seminar on the 60th Anniversary of Academician Liu Yun's Teaching and the 80th Anniversary of His Birthday" held by Hunan Normal University in 2008, Liu Yun once said lightly: "I have done three things in my life. After a pause, the old man raised his voice and said that he planned to do a fourth thing in two or three years: not to let the Chinese giant salamander (baby fish) disappear from the earth.
The "three things" that Liu Yun said are simply: artificial breeding of four large fish of grass carp, artificial breeding of Chinese turtle, and artificial reproduction of polyploid fish (Xiangyun carp, Xiangyun carp). He used more than half a century of efforts to write a legend of the waters.
Protecting the giant salamander, which is on the verge of extinction, is the wish of Academician Liu Jun in his later years. (Infographic)
A new industry of "aquaculture farmers" has been born
"Successfully solved the problem of artificial breeding of four major fish, fundamentally solved the problem of seed production of economic fish, promoted the rapid development of China's fishery, and produced huge social and economic benefits." Professor Chen Liangbi, director of the Hunan Institute of Biology, once commented on the first thing that Academician Liu Yun said.
Since ancient times, the four large fish of the grass silver carp can survive in the pond, but they cannot breed in the pond, and the seed can only be obtained in the river. With the destruction of the environment by human activities, natural seedlings are becoming increasingly scarce, and the situation is very grim.
In 1958, the 28-year-old Liu Yun took the initiative to ask Miao to undertake the reproductive, physiological and artificial reproduction research of the four major fish. He went deep into the rivers, ponds and lakes of 36 counties and cities to take thousands of physical samples, and concluded through research that the germ cells of pond-reared domestic fish can develop, but the female fish cells can only develop to the primary stage, and artificial induction must be carried out to continue to complete mature division.
The research of aquatic reproduction is inseparable from the development and promotion of applied technology, and Liu Yun, newly married Yan'er, rolled up the covers and took students to Qidong County. The Qidong Experimental Base has more people and fewer beds, and four prime-age men lie horizontally on one bed, which is jokingly called "piling up luohans", and I don't know how many nights Liu Yun hid on the benches of the fishing shed for the night.
Liu Jun's hard work finally bore fruit. Over the years, the amount of fish farming in the four major fish has soared, and incomplete statistics have increased the net profit by more than 30 billion yuan, giving birth to the new industry of "aquaculture farmers".
A family portrait of Liu Jun's family in 1964. At that time, his daughter Bai Ji was 5 years old and his son Shaojun was 3 years old. (Source: Economic Daily)
He let the turtles into the homes of ordinary people
Turtle, also known as turtle, commonly known as water fish, is a precious economic animal, delicious meat, rich in nutrition, high protein content, is regarded as a valuable tonic. In the 1970s and 1980s, the price of domestic turtles once reached 500 to 600 yuan / kg.
Let the turtle go from the exclusive enjoyment of the rich to the table of ordinary people's homes, Liu Yun once again created a legend.
He led the research team to the Dongting Lake area, and after careful observation and exploration, he clarified the sexual maturity age of turtles, the development of germ cells, the embryonic development process, and the environmental factors affecting embryonic development.
From 1993 to 1995, the output value of Hanshou's turtle breeding reached more than 200 million yuan, and farmers honored Liu Yun as the "God of Wealth".
In order to save scientific research funds, Liu Yun often hitchhiked to Hanshou, and twice almost had a car accident. After his wife Hu Yunjin knew about this situation, as long as Liu Yun went to the base, she always had to confess that "Mo hitchhiked".
Liu Yun at work. (Source: Hunan Association for Science and Technology website)
"Xiangyun crucian carp" specializes in contributing protein
Liu Yun has worked hard all his life and achieved fruitful results, but the most well-known is that he developed the heterologous tetraploid crucian carp and carp for the first time in the world, which marks a creative breakthrough in the theory and application of fish multiplication sports species in China.
In October 1979, someone caught a fish that had never been seen before at the Donghu Fishery in Xiangyin County. It is particularly large, like a crucian carp and like a carp. The discerning Liu Yun found a new direction of research from this individual who was accidentally crossed by carp and crucian carp.
Through their efforts, Liu Yun and his research group successfully realized the distant hybridization between crucian carp and carp, and then selected and bred from the extremely limited hybrid offspring that can be bred and treated as cell engineering techniques to produce offspring with tetraploid chromosomes with the ability to naturally reproduce offspring. The research team used this valuable tetraploid fish resource and normal diploid fish hybridization to obtain triploid crucian carp and carp, thus creating a new genetic population. This discovery shocked the international fish research community.
These two kinds of Xiangyun crucian carp and carp (formerly known as engineering crucian carp and carp) called by Academician Liu Yun as "do not reproduce offspring and contribute protein for humans" have a protein content of 1/6 in their muscles, which are larger, faster than ordinary crucian carp and carp, strong disease resistance, low temperature resistance and coarse bait, less fresh and thorny taste, and can be stocked in any breeding water, do not produce offspring, and do not interfere with other fish resources.
Liu Yun developed the triploid Xiangyun crucian carp. (Infographic)
【Multi-faceted Liu Jun】A real "fish idiot"
Liu Yun was born in shuangfeng County to an ordinary peasant family, and when it comes to today's achievements, he summarizes it with "linking theory with practice and perseverance". In the eyes of Mrs. Hu Yunjin, he is a real "fish idiot".
Hu Yunjin said: "He didn't care about anything except fish in his life, he didn't know anything, 3 children were born, and none of them were taken with him." Now an 80-year-old man, he still spends his days soaking in the lab and squatting in the nursery to fiddle with the fish. ”
In 1959, the eldest daughter was born, Liu Yun was conducting research on the artificial reproduction of silver carp, and in order to remember this moment, he named the child Liu Baiji. The following year, the second eldest was born, Liu Yun was studying grass carp (also known as carp), so he named his second son Liu Yu. By the time the third child was born, Liu Yun still wanted to take a name with a fish, but was vetoed by his wife: "There are already two fish in the family, and it can't be a fish in the family, and finally named Shaojun." ”
However, Liu Shaojun studied fish and is now a doctor and professor of ichthyology. Together with his father, he is also the leading doctoral supervisor of the doctoral program of developmental biology at Hunan Normal University. Teachers from the School of Life Sciences of Normal University introduced that in the fish laboratory, you can see two faces that resemble each other, one old and one young, or do experiments together, or explore and discuss together. At the Hanshou and Xiangyin Experimental Bases, located on the banks of Dongting Lake, this old man and young man often braved the scorching sun and barefoot to collect specimens on the fields and ponds.
A family portrait of Liu Jun's family in 2003. (Source: Economic Daily)
[The origin of the names of Xiangyun carp and Xiangyun carp] is to go to the world like clouds in the sky.
Xiangyun carp and Xiangyun carp, about their naming, there is a small story. Xiangyun carp and Xiangyun carp were originally named "engineering crucian carp, engineering carp" because it was successfully studied using cell engineering. The research group believes that the academic flavor of this name is too strong, and the word "engineering" is also easy to cause misunderstanding. Some consumers have responded that it does not sound good. Therefore, in 1995, "engineering carp" and "engineering carp" were changed to "Xiangyun carp" and "Xiangyun carp". Liu Yun explained the meaning of this name for me, "'Xiang' represents Hunan, 'cloud' is the harmonic sound of '筠' in my name, and it also refers to the clouds in the sky, expressing that this brand-name product cultivated by Hunan should not only be promoted to the whole country, but also like the clouds in the sky, go to the world." ”
This ideal is not illusory. On April 8, 1998, Xiangyun Industrial Co., Ltd. was established in Hunan Normal University, marking the industrialization of Xiangyun carp and Xiangyun carp, which are the world's leading high-tech achievements. These two kinds of fish, which do not produce offspring, but only produce delicious protein, really fly like clouds to all parts of the country.
Author: Tadpole Jun Synthesis