Masatoshi Nei

Masatoshi Nei (Japanese根 井 正 利, Masatoshi Nei, born January 2, 1931 in Miyazaki Prefecture ) is a geneticist and evolutionary biologist Japanese origin. He is Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and Director of the Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics at the Pennsylvania State University.

Life

Nei 1953 concluded his studies at the University of Miyazaki from 1959 and gained his doctorate at the University of Kyoto, where he worked until 1962. From 1962 to 1969 he worked at the National Institute of Radiology. After he was from 1969 to 1972 professor at Brown University, he worked from 1972 to 1990 as a professor of population genetics at the Center for Demographic and Population Genetics, University of Texas in Houston. Since 1990 he teaches and conducts research at the Pennsylvania State University. Together with Walter M. Fitch founded Nei 1983, the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution 1993 and the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. Among his pupils were many of the currently established scientists in the field of molecular evolution.

Research

Early 1970s developed Nei a new statistical method that can be determine the genetic distance between two populations ( Nei 's distance) and with which one can estimate the time at which the populations have split from a common ancestor. With multiple statistical methods he tried to test experimentally the neutral theory of molecular evolution. Nei holds mutations and natural selection not for the determining factor of evolution and thus represents a neo- mutationistischen position that it supported by several statistical studies.

Honors and Memberships

  • Masatoshi Nei: Molecular Population Genetics and Evolution. North -Holland, Amsterdam and New York. (1975 ), ISBN 0-444-10751-7
  • Masatoshi Nei and Richard K. Koehn (eds.): Evolution of Genes and Proteins. Sinauer Assoc., Sunderland, MA (1983 ), ISBN 0-87893-604-1
  • Masatoshi Nei: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics. Columbia University Press, New York ( 1987), ISBN 0-231-06321-0
  • Arun K. Roychoudhury and Masatoshi Nei: Human Polymorphic Genes: World Distribution. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York ( 1988), ISBN 0-19-505123-8
  • Masatoshi Nei and Sudhir Kumar: Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics. Oxford University Press, Oxford ( 2000), ISBN 0-19-513584-9
Evolutionary factor American Academy of Arts and Sciences National Academy of Sciences Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal Kyoto Prize Integrated Authority File
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