The Dog Genome Project's latest research seeks to understand how breeding has shaped canine behavior.
Deposit PhotosTwenty-eight years ago, Elaine Ostrander set out to map dog genomes. The genetics researcher wanted to understand why dogs behave how they do and what in their genes might determine that. She knew this type of mapping was possible; two contemporary studies had shown that much. What she didn’t know was that it would take a quarter-century and dozens of studies for her team to find an answer., an initiative she launched in 2004 in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health.
But the Dog Genome Project isn’t just studying dogs for humanity’s sake. It’s also working to understand canines better. In, Ostrander and her team finally unlocked one piece of the puzzle: Can genes determine what dogs are good at? Yes. “Because we needed them to hunt, we needed them to herd, we needed them to guard our flocks, we needed them to guard ourselves,” Ostrander says, “we’ve been selecting to get these ever more refined behaviors.” For herding dogs, for instance, the scientists identified a class of genes that Ostrander says “looks like it’s been under a really strong selection by humans” to produce shepherd-like behavior.
Most dog breeds have only been around for a few hundred years, which is “nothing in terms of evolution,” Ostrander says. In other words, studying dogs is “like looking at a movie and fast-forwarding to get to the end,” she says. Learning how nature has shaped these animals so quickly “would inform studies of diversity across all species, and all mammals,” she says.
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