Canine Genetics and Genomics

Abstract

In the past fifteen years, tremendous progress has been made in dog genomics. Several genetic aspects of cancer, heart disease, hip dysplasia, vision and hearing problems in dogs have been investigated and studied in detail. Genome-wide associative studies have made it possible to identify several genes associated with diseases, morphological and behavioral traits. The dog genome contains an extraordinary amount of genetic variability that distinguishes the different dog breeds. As a consequence of the selective programs, applied using stringent breed standards, each dog breed represents, today, a population isolated from the others. The availability of modern next generation sequencing (NGS) techniques and the identification of millions of single functional mutations (SNPs) has enabled us to obtain new and unknown detailed genomic data of the different breeds.