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Biotech Science

Woof! Dog Genome Assembled 43

Posted by timothy from the that-must-have-been-a-bitch dept.
Manwe's Herald writes "The first draft of the dog genome sequence has been deposited into free public databases for use by biomedical and veterinary researchers around the globe, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced today."
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Woof! Dog Genome Assembled More

Woof! Dog Genome Assembled

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  • Open Source Pets (Score:4, Funny)

    by spector30 ( 319592 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @03:49PM (#9700891) Homepage
    Who would have known they would Open Source this stuff. I'm surprised someone didn't get a patent so you'd have to pay a royalty for every breath your dog takes.

  • Genealogy of a Mutt (Score:4, Interesting)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @03:49PM (#9700900) Homepage Journal
    So how soon will I be able to take a DNA sample from my dog and find out what combination of breeds she is?

    • Re:Genealogy of a Mutt (Score:5, Informative)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @04:24PM (#9701297) Journal
      IIRC, the primary sequence was from a boxer and they did additional sequencing in 10 other breeds, including a greyhound and a Pomeranian (forget what else) plus coyotes and wolves. Celera, meanwhile, sequenced Craig Venter's poodle.

      Much of the point of looking at dogs is to understand the differences between breeds, like why collies are born knowing how to herd sheep while Shih-Tzus are completely stupid all their lives. So, to the degree that your dog is related to breeds they've looked at, you can get started as soon as they clean the data enough to post it to dbSNP.

    • Re:Genealogy of a Mutt (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SB9876 ( 723368 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:41PM (#9701971)
      The issue of Science a few weeks back had a bg article devoted to the dog genome completion. They also reported results from initial studies that showed the relationships between various dog breeds. It turns out (as suspected) that dogs were domesticated in Asia as asian breeds are the most different from other domesticated breeds and most similar to wolves. They did an evolutionary tree for the rest of the dog breeds but the cladistics are still being worked out so most of the other breeds are still in a bit of limbo. They expect to work out the relationships of those breeds over time.

      This study was significant because it was the first to be able to unambiguously identify dog DNA by breed reliably. Previous attempts using smaller numbers of SNPs tended to be very innacurate.

      The biggest result of the dog genome is for human medicine. Geneticists have been pushing for dog genomes (they're already working on a second dog breed genome) for years. Purebreed dogs are a geneticists dream. Each breed has distintive features as well as characteristic diseases such as arthritis, nerve degeneration and cardiovascular disease. Purebreed dogs are also basically giant inbred families with meticulous documentation about their lineage. Having dog genomes actually has a great deal of potential to revolutionize human medicine as a result.
  • Forget tracking people. We need to elimate all those strays. This is the first step toward tracking all those pets. After we have all the pets marked, then we can remove all the unmarked ones. Let's just hope our removal system just removes that species and not us as well.

  • In case of slashdotting.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hex4def6 ( 538820 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @04:06PM (#9701118)
    Heres the text in case of a slashdotting;

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  • And open source geeks everywhere begin compiling their own version of Dog.
  • Dog liscences will now be under the GPL. Breeds will be reffered to from this point forward as Distros. Microsoft will build a grossly ineffiecent one, but will show everyone how it looks really pretty and doesn't bite, and everyone will buy that dog instead of decent dogs.

    I wonder how long it is before a joint effort by animal rights owners and fanatical christians start complaining about whether man understanding this much of Dog is morally right.

  • Somebody (Score:3, Funny)

    by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) <seebert42@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @04:32PM (#9701391) Homepage Journal
    Tell NASA [slashdot.org]: now they can have cloned dogs to go with their robotic cats.

  • Massive number of chromosomes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @05:13PM (#9701758) Homepage Journal
    I had heard that the biggest problem with either sequencing the dog's DNA or cloning a dog (the Missyplicity [savingsandclone.com] project) was the comparatively large number of chromosomes. In fact, a National Geographic article titled "Wolf to Woof" (tiny excerpt available here [nationalgeographic.com]) notes the dog's 78 chromosomes [pathlights.com] (compared with our measly 46) as one of the reasons you can group a Great Dane and a Pomeranian as part of the same species.

    I'm a cat person, myself. Cats, being contrary by nature, allowed themselves to be cloned, but then came out looking completely different [cbsnews.com] because coat color and pattern is determined after conception.

    • Re:Massive number of chromosomes (Score:5, Funny)

      by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:14PM (#9703392) Homepage
      Specifically, they found:
      • on chromosome 37: bringing home dead things.
      • on chromosome 16: sniffing other dogs' butts
      • on chromosome 19: rolling in the mud
      • on chromosome 62: peeing on fire hydrants
      • on chromosome 77: chasing cyclists and mail carriers
      • on chromosome 44: jerking your leg when you get your belly scratched

      And in case any of this seems like irrelevant ivory-tower stuff, it has some very real applications, e.g., they may be able to modify the human genome to remove some of these same behaviors from the males of our own species.

  • Oh, I wish I could have a dog. I love 'em. The only problem is that I'm horribly allergic to them. I break out in hives, my throat closes up, the works.

    I hope we will eventually be able isolate the allergen, find the sequence that codes for it (assuming it is a protein), and alter it such that it doesn't adversely affect the dog's health and keeps people like me from having horrible reactions to them.

    • Re:Is allergy relief in sight? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by amide_one ( 750148 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:56PM (#9702539) Homepage
      Not to sound unsympathetic, but why should dogs be changed (genetically modified, presumably) for the sake of your sinuses? Especially when the protein(s) that bother different people might be completely different?

      I'd rather hope for the protein to be identified, as you said, and then for some sort of medicine created that specifically binds to that protein and blocks your immune response. Repeat for cats, plants, whatever else people are allergic to, you've got a nice allergy spray that really really works.
      • Good point. That works, too. Either way, having the dog genome mapped out will help in this endeavor.
      • Mind you I saw this on TV - who knows if it's true or ethical or what. But there's a crossbreed called a Labradoodle (Labrador / Poodle mix) that is a "designer breed" for people with allergies. Poodles don't shed, apparently, and, well, people like Labradors better. Google it and see what you can find.
        • There is already are breeds for people with alergies. on this web page [dogs-in-canada.com]:

          Among the hypoallergenic breeds to choose from: the Standard Poodle, Giant Schnauzer, Afghan Hound, Irish Water Spaniel, Komondor, Miniature Poodle, Standard Schnauzer, Portuguese Water Dog, Puli, Soft-coated Wheaten Terrier, Kerry Blue and Bedlington Terriers, Toy Poodle, Miniature Schnauzer, Bichon Frise, Mexican Hairless and Chinese Crested Dog.

          "Hypoallergenic" is the fancy way to say "doesn't affect people with allergies".

  • meh, I won't be impressed until they harness this technology to create a real-life Catdog! [nick.com]

  • But will this allow Poodles to fly? (Score:3, Funny)

    by jebiester ( 589234 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @10:27PM (#9703883)
    From "The Vidiot from UHF"...

    Ola! And welcome to Raul's Wild Kingdom! Today, we're teaching poodles how to fly! Are you ready Fifi? Are psyched? Here we gooooooo..... (Throws poodle out of window)

    yipe yipe yipe yipe yipe yipe *thump*

    You know, sometimes it takes 'em a leetle longer to get it right.
  • So will this lead to more or fewer medical experiments on dogs? Having the genes could answer alot of questions but it could also make the dogs more desirable test candidates.

    I don't know if it's still true, but at one time vivisection of dogs was common practice in medical and dental schools in the United States so students could "see how organs worked."

    I admit it, I have a soft spot for other social mammals of a certain brain size. I can understand lower primates as an unfortunate necessity for human
    • I personally doubt that having (another) dog genome out there will increase the use of dogs in medical experiments. In the West, dogs are pretty much universally regarded as pets so it makes research on them very unpopular--eg your website. Also, we have much better animals for research--rat and mouse, both of which have had their genomes sequenced IIRC. They take up less space, reproduce and mature much more rapidly, are less expensive to feed, multiple different inbred strains are available (much mores

      • somebody's got to kill the animals and it's a no-brainer that it is physically and psychologically easier for a (Western) lab tech to kill a rat than kill a dog.

        Actually, I've heard that there is a movement to stop using rats...

        Major research universities and labratories have started to use lawyers instead of rats for their experiments. There are three reasons why they are favoring lawyers over rats.

        1. There are more lawyers than rats.
        2. They find that lab technicians do not become as emotionall
  • Finally I can have my chairdog, and move arround the office while having a massage.

  • now, with genetic engineering, we can create dogs of arbitrary size, color, aspect, and abilities. Oh, wait...
  • I think it's kinda odd that the article notes that the fruit fly is so close in structure to the human... Maybe they will be using bugs for further testing instead of the dogs - at least the animal protection groups won't get so upset about that.

    Also, I'm not sure how exactly this genome assembly was conducted, but maybe the people doing the research could benefit from using Stanford University's Folding@Home program [stanford.edu] (or at least the distributed computing idea behind it) to do additional testing in this

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