From the 80-kilogram Great Dane to the 1-kilogram tiny teacup poodle, there seems to be a dog for everyone. Now, the largest genetic analysis to date has figured out how those breeds came to be, which ones are really closely related, and what makes some dogs more susceptible to certain diseases.
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[Researchers] Elaine Ostrander and Heidi Parker […] weren’t interested in determining how and when dogs were domesticated, but how all the breeds developed. Their sample now includes 1346 dogs representing 161 breeds, or not quite half of all kinds of dogs.…
Almost all the breeds fell into 23 larger groupings called clades, the team details [April 25] in Cell Reports. Although genetically defined, the clades also tended to bring together dogs with similar traits: Thus boxers, bulldogs, and Boston terriers—all bred for strength—fall into one clade; whereas herders like sheepdogs, corgis, and collies fall into another.
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[B]efore vets couldn’t really understand why a genetic disease called collie eye anomaly, which can distort different parts of the eye, and shows up in collies, border collies, and Australian shepherds, also occurs in Nova Scotia duck tolling retrievers. But the genetic analysis shows that this retriever has either collie or Australian shepherd ancestors that may have passed on the defective gene.
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