The following was posted by my friend Melanie Chang, who is involved in the Canine Behavioral Genetics Project. Permission to crosspost - please do not abridge or delete content, however.
Dear owners, trainers, and handlers,
Over the past two years, my colleagues and I have asked the working Border
Collie community for help with a groundbreaking project examining the
genetics of behavior in Border Collies and other purpose-bred dogs. I am
writing today to thank you for your help, and update you as to our progress
to date.
With your help, we have collected blood samples from over 200 Border
Collies, either by mail, or by traveling to events such as the Soldier
Hollow Classic SDT and the USBCHA Finals in 2007. We have completed
genotyping almost 80 of these Border Collies using Affymetrix Canine v2.0
array technology, which allows us to survey 130,000 genetic markers (single
nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs) for each dog. By correlating this
genetic marker data with questionnaire information provided by owners, who
detailed their dogs' responses to noise and other stimuli, we have been able
to identify a number of candidate genes responsible for noise phobia and
possibly, more broadly, hearing acuity in working Border Collies. We are
currently working to test and confirm these findings. We presented our
results last month at the International Canine/Feline Genomics Meeting in
St. Malo, France, and are in the process of expanding and preparing these
results for publication. We are very excited; ours is the first study to
identify possible candidate genes for complex behaviors in the dog.
In addition to our candidate gene findings, we conducted analyses of
population structure within Border Collies. The great majority of our
sample is made up of ISDS and ABCA registered dogs, but it also includes a
handful of kennel club registered show Border Collies, primarily of
Australasian breeding. The results of three different types of analyses
(phylogenetic, clustering, and principal components) all suggest a genetic
split between working and show Border Collies that is at least as large as
the distances between some other pure dog breeds. [emphasis added] Besides being of general
interest to the working Border Collie community, these considerations are
crucial for helping us interpret the results of our genetic association
analyses.
More information on the noise phobia and population structure project may be
seen here:
http://www.k9behavioralgenetics.com/NoisePhobia.php
WE ARE STILL SEEKING MORE PARTICIPATING DOGS AND OWNERS. If you would like
to be involved in this project, which may have broad-ranging implications
for the working Border Collie breed, please consult our website for details
on how to participate, and also feel free to contact me with questions at
any time. My interests in this project are both personal as well as
professional, as I have three working Border Collies and am a USBCHA and
USBCC member.
Thank you very much, Melanie
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Melanie Lee Chang, Ph.D.
Canine Behavioral Genetics Project
University of California, San Francisco
MelanieC@lppi.ucsf.edu
http://www.k9behavioralgenetics.com