Boxer is first dog to have full genome revealed

* 18:00 07 December 2005
* NewScientist.com news service
* Rowan Hooper


A female boxer dog has provided the DNA for the first complete sequence of the dog genome, putting into the doghouse the patchy, 80% coverage of a poodle called Shadow, published two years ago.

A publicly funded consortium led by Kerstin Lindblad-Toh of the Broad Institute, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, used the shotgun sequencing technique to map the genome of Tasha, an inbred boxer. With this technique the genome is first broken into fragments and the DNA sequence of each determined. Then a computer stitches the fragments back together.

The process must be repeated several times to ensure accuracy, and the new draft is the product of 7.5 repetitions. The genome of Shadow, the poodle owned by gene-entrepreneur Craig Venter, had only 1.5 times coverage. The boxer was chosen as it is highly inbred. That means the difference between its paired chromosomes are smaller, making sequencing easier.

Domestic dogs vary wildly in appearance, yet their genomes are 99.85% similar. The boxer and the poodle, for example, differ by about a single nucleotide change in every 900 bases. “A dog is a dog in a genomic sense,” says Lindblad-Toh.

Cancer, epilepsy and diabetes

Dogs also have more genes in common with humans than do mice, despite splitting from our common ancestor before mice did. So the more detailed coverage will greatly improve our understanding of the genes underlying appearance and some diseases.

“Dogs and humans share many diseases, including cancer, epilepsy and diabetes,” says co-author Elinor Karlsson, also at the Broad Institute. “By directly comparing the disease genes found in dogs to genes in humans, discoveries made in dogs can benefit human medicine.”

As well as Tasha’s genome, the researchers sequenced smaller parts of the genomes from 10 other dog breeds, such as the German shepherd, beagle and Italian greyhound, as well as closely related species, the grey wolf and the coyote. They catalogued some 2.5 million individual DNA differences between breeds.

The greater than 99% coverage of the 2.4 billion letters of Tasha’s genome has also revealed an important twist in our understanding of how natural selection works on DNA. Much of the non-coding DNA in dogs is the same as that in humans, indicating that it is under strong natural selection.

“Hence, non-coding DNA is not just ‘junk’,” says Hans Ellegren, of the department of evolutionary biology at Uppsala University, Sweden. Instead, he says that such sequences may constitute non-coding RNA or may have a regulatory function.

Journal reference: Nature (DOI: 10.1038/nature04338)

Dogs also have more genes in common with humans than do mice

Amstaffer, I just wanted to take this opritunity to tell you that my hubby and I noticed how absolutely gorgeus Saladin is. He has such a distiguished face!!! Athena is beautiful too!

I hope this doesn't lead to more dogs be used for animal testing.

Interesting story however.

Well I am not going to be popular with my response but its my opinion so here it goes.....

I feel testing animals in any way that causes them pain is wrong...Period. Why are we soooo arrogant as a species to think that we can torture other animals to make our lives better? I think one day we will look back at this period of history (animal testing) with shame. Animals are innocent and should not be abused. Why are we on some quest to live so long anyway. Why should we torture others just to add a few years to our own. A lot of the testing done isn't even to save lives anyway, it is to test things that support our vanity .

Now this is where you guys will really get mad at me, but it is how I feel..... First, all of our test subjects (animals) are different than humans (dogs geneticlly are much different) so many of the tests done are later found to be worthless and animals are tortured for nothing. If we must test then why not use a subject that would be much closer or even the same?

I was a Corrections officer for 9 years before I finished my degrees, and I knew many inmates who were serving life sentences without possiblity of parole. Several of those I spoke with said they would volunteer for testing in attempt to help repay society, get more privileges, for money to give their families and to beable to have conjugal visits. So we have perfect matches that volunteer for testing.....Why continue to test subjects who don't match us?

If we ran out of volunteers I would also have no problem with testing inmates who have multiple murders and rapist or child molesters. I think they should be put to death anyway so why not use them to save and extend all the lives that the innocent animals are?

Humans could tell you what hurts and would be way better subjects.

Ok...let the flaming begin It sounds radical but if you calmly and logically think about it....It makes sense. If you get over the arrogance of our species and think logically doesn't it make more sense morally and scientifically.

It sounds radical but if you calmly and logically think about it....It makes sense. If you get over the arrogance of our species and think logically doesn't it make more sense morally and scientifically?

You couldn't tell a child who is fighting cancer or aids that they are being vain for wanting for wanting to be healthy. Or someone who came in contact with the SARS virus, or avain flu, they are being vain for wanting to live to see another day with their family, without being deathly ill.