Tag: canine


March 23, 2012

How Did the Shar-Pei Get His Wrinkly Skin?

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Figure 1 of Hitte and Webster’s 2011 PLoS Genetics paper clusters 509 dogs based on their genetic similarity. In this figure, dogs that are genetically similar to each other are grouped together, and, not surprisingly, this grouping corresponds quite well with breed (dogs of the same breed are grouped together). Some breeds do cluster together (for instance, all the retrievers are clustered together, as are the all the spaniels), but the relatively long branches connecting dogs within the same breed and the relatively short branches connecting the different breeds together is consistent with breeds which originated from a common dog gene pool long ago and have remained quite distinct. Note that the longer branches in the Boxer breed are due to the fact that the boxer genome sequence was used as a reference for selecting SNPs, rather than a reflection of true genetic distance. Image from Vaysse A, et al. PLoS Genet. (2011) vol. 7 iss. 10 pp. e1002316.

March 23rd is National Puppy Day! How did the Shar-Pei get his wrinkly skin? The question sounds like the beginning of one of Kipling’s “Just So” stories, but this and other questions were the subject of a recent genetics study. What gives some breeds their Lilliputian legs and others their lengthy [...]

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