( University of Oxford researchers Dr....)Scientists fetch useful information from dog genome publications

, University of Oxford researchers Dr. Caleb Webber and Prof. Chris Ponting are publishing a manuscript describing their comparison of dog and human chromosomes. Since the evolutionary divergence of dogs and humans approximately 95 million years ago, canine chromosomes have undergone considerable breakage relative to other species. In contrast to the 46 chromosomes present in each human cell, dogs possess 78 chromosomes, but each set essentially encodes the same amount of information.

"We present a new model of chromosome evolution that accounts for the extensive breakage seen in the dog genome," explains Webber. "Our results demonstrate that dog chromosomes have not broken randomly, which is the commonly held view, but instead that they preferentially fracture within ancient 'hot spots.' These fragile 'hot spots' contain an unusual number of guanine and cytosine DNA bases and appear to suffer higher rates of mutation."

SINEs of genetic diversity

Another study appearing in the dog genome section of Genome Research highlights an important source of canine genomic variation: SINEs, or short interspersed elements. SINEs are abundant mobile DNA elements that are common in mammals and have contributed extensively to genome evolution. In their publication, Drs. Wei Wang and Ewen Kirkness, scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research, report the identification of more than 10,000 SINE insertions in the canine genome and describe the potential impact of these insertions on phenotypic diversity in dogs.

"These SINEs are bimorphic, which means that at a given locus, some dogs have the SINE sequence while others do not," explains Kirkness. "This may have a profound impact on gene expression differences and disease determination in dogs."

SINE-associated diseases have already been described in Doberman Pinchers and Labrador Retrievers. For example, centronuclear myopathy, a muscle-wasting disease, is
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Source:Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

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