Does Dog Hair Hold Clues to Human Health?

More on PawNation: coats, dogs, fur, genes, hair, health

Aug 28th 2009

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Hi. How come your hair's so short? Photo: star5112/Flickr

Short, long, straight, curly, wiry, smooth or extra fluffy -- dog hair comes in a lint-brush-busting variety of lengths and textures. Now, researchers at the National Human Genome Institute have discovered that almost all the variation in dog fur comes from just three genes, as NPR reports.

Elaine A. Ostrander, chief of the Institute's cancer genetics branch, studied the DNA of more than 1,000 dogs, representing about 90 different breeds, according to NPR. "You can go to the dog park, and every breed of dog looks different from every other breed, it seems. Yet, you know, when we get down to the molecular biology, we really find that it's a combination of three different genes that accounts for all that variation," Ostrander told NPR.

Ostrander and her colleagues found that short-haired dogs like beagles have the ancestral form of each of the three genes -- the same versions found in wolves, which dogs are descended from. Changes to those genes lead to traits like wiry fur, long hair, or beards. Curlicues like Portuguese water dogs have a variation in each of the three genes, reports MSNBC.

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