A graduate from the biotechnology faculty with GPA of 3.68/4.0, Son is a researcher at the department.

Son successfully defended his graduation thesis in English on "Describing the genetic characteristics of six Vietnamese domestic chicken varieties D-loop mitochondrial DNA sequence" at the end of December 2018.

Two months later, Son conducted further study on three chicken varieties and wrote an article titled ‘Genomic characterization of three Vietnamese indigenous chicken varieties using mitochondrial D-loop sequences’.

The article was sent to Canadian Journal of Animal Science, a prestigious ISI journal. It was published online before it appeared in print in the third quarter of 2019.

Son is also the co-author of the article on the "assessment of genetic diversity and population structure of Vietnamese six-finger chicken" published in the Vietnam Agriculture Science journal.

Son has also had three scientific research works introduced at international workshops.

Born into an agricultural family, Son had difficulties persuading his parents to allow him to study at the Vietnam Agriculture Academy. His parents wanted him to apply for medical school like his classmates in the biology major class for the gifted. However, he insisted on his choice.

When Son was a second-year student, he obtained a scholarship worth $2,000 from the faculty in a cooperation program with a US company.

When entering the third year, Son began working at laboratory. He realized that Vietnamese favor strange fowl varieties, such as ones with big legs or many toes, and decided to study six typical chicken varieties in the north for his graduation thesis.

The 9X student from Bac Ninh province used the DNA mitochondrial D-loop to find the origin of chicken varieties. He found that the chicken varieties had close crossbreeding relations. The ancestors of six species are red-tailed forest chickens.

The research results can be applied to the selection and conservation of genetic resources of indigenous chickens and contribute to the understanding of the value and relationship of native Vietnamese chickens with other varieties. The study may also expand to find molecular markers to distinguish between chicken varieties with similar characteristics.

It took Son two years to carry out the research. To collect 120-140 chicken samples, Son had to go to many localities, and persuade farmers to allow him to take blood samples, but they refused. Finally, he decided to extract DNA from chicken feathers.

Mai Lan

Vietnamese students in RoK intensify scientific research

The Vietnamese Students’ Association in Korea (VSAK) held the sixth annual conference of Vietnamese young scientists in Seoul on May 26.