Looking at a pooch can reveal a lot about its owner, and now that includes the owner’s genetics. A team headed by scientists in Massachusetts has announced the DNA sequence of a boxer named Tasha, a detailed comparison of the dog’s genome with those of mice and people, and a study of genetic variation among dog breeds. The work will inform scientists’ understanding of people as well as dogs, the researchers predict.
People domesticated the dog from the grey wolf from 15,000 to 100,000 years ago. In the past few hundred years, they have bred the species into roughly 400 varieties.
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