ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN — From pugs to labradoodles to huskies, dogs are our faithful companions. They live with us, play with us and even sleep with us. But how did a once nocturnal, fearsome wolf-like animal evolve over tens of thousands of years to become beloved members of our family? And what can dogs tell us about human health? Through the power of genomics, scientists have been comparing dog and wolf DNA to try and identify the genes involved in domestication.
Amanda Pendleton, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research fellow in the Michigan Medicine Department of Human Genetics, has been reviewing current domestication research and noticed something peculiar about the DNA of modern dogs: at some places it didn’t appear to match DNA from ancient dogs. Pendleton and her colleagues in assistant professor Jeffrey Kidd, Ph.D.’s laboratory are working to understand the dog genome to answer questions in genome biology, evolution and disease.
“We convinced ourselves that previous studies found many genes not associated with being a dog but with being a breed dog,” says Pendleton. Breed dogs, […]
I actually read a couple of years ago, in a scientific study that domesticated dogs have evolved their DNA to be much different than that of wolves. That explains why dogs are much more acceptable to humans as family members, and not at all like the wildness of wolves. I love dogs just like family members; as a matter of fact I like them better than many of my human family members.
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