Dog Genetics Study Reveals Descendants of the All-American Pup
Studying the evolution of Homo sapiens’ BFF tells us a lot about the history of our own species, the researchers write. Because dogs suffer from many of the same illnesses as we do, like epilepsy, cancer, and diabetes, studying the way the genes linked to those diseases travel and manifest across different breeds could potentially model similar patterns in humans.
“Every time there’s a disease gene found in dogs it turns out to be important in people, too,” said the paper’s senior author and NIH dog geneticist Elaine Ostrander, in a statement.
Of course, quantifying the American-ness of dogs will ultimately prove as complicated as doing the same for humans: If you look far back into their evolutionary past, they, like us, all hail from a common ancestor that’s neither Old World or New. And, the data suggest that if you look far enough into the future, these dogs, like their owners, might eventually interbreed enough so that all those old distinctions are rendered obsolete.
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