Breeds Apart: Purebred dogs defined by DNA differences
By John Travis
As fans of the famous Westminster Dog Show will attest, dogs come in all shapes and sizes. The most thorough DNA analysis yet of purebred dogs suggests that canine breeds, typically defined by physical features and family history, can also be discerned genetically with great accuracy.
“At a DNA level, breeds are a very real concept. Every poodle is more closely related to a poodle than it is to a dog of any other breed,” says Elaine Ostrander of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. In the May 21 Science, she and her colleagues describe their analysis of DNA from 85 dog breeds.