An important contribution in animal genetics is made by PhD Prof. Constantin N. Vasilescu, from the Higher School of Veterinary Medicine in Bucharest, due to which he becomes a forerunner of therediscovery of Mendel’s laws, but in animals. Wanting to see how hereditary syndactyly in pigs is inherited, between 1889–1895, starting from a syndicated boar and three normal females (sows), through successive crosses, he ends up obtaining only syndactical products, thus managing to fix the dominant character of the syndactyly, the resulting piglets being therefore homozygous. Prof. C. N. Vasilescu published the results of his study in the article entitled: “Coup d’oeil sur l ’existence des porcs monodactyles”,Journal de Medecine Veterinaire et de Zootechnie de Lyon, May 1896, pp. 257–330, the results of his study, in which he gives the following definition of heredity: “Heredity is ultimately only an appendix to reproduction, and the reproductive elements are nothing more than recorders of all the biological changes suffered by the individuals who produced them”. The experiences of C. N. Vasilescu and Augustin Vucol from 1899 on the heredity of the character of syndactyly in pigs were repeated by N. Filip, reaching the same result, namely that syndactyly is dominant over the character of polydactyly, and in F–2 the ratio between syndactyl and polydactyl individuals is 3:1. It was exactly the result obtained by Mendel in 1865 on peas, about which the Romanian authors had not yet known. The results obtained by N. Filip are described in the 250‑page monograph entitled “Les animaux domestiques de la Roumanie”, also presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition.
Keywords: Constantin N. Vasilescu; syndactyly; piglets; animal genetics
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