DNA hint of European origin for dogs. 14 November 2013Last updated at 19:32 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News Some dog-looking remains are more than 30,000 years old The results of a DNA study suggest that dogs were domesticated in Europe. No-one doubts that "man's best friend" is an evolutionary off-shoot of the grey wolf, but scientists have long argued over the precise timing and location for their emergence. The new research, based on a genetic analysis of ancient and modern dog and wolf samples, points to a European origin at least 18,000 years ago. Olaf Thalmann and colleagues report the investigation in Science magazine. It adds a further layer of complexity to the story.
Earlier DNA studies have suggested the modern pooch - in all its shapes and sizes - could track its beginnings back to wolves that attached themselves to human societies in the Middle East or perhaps in East Asia as recently as 15,000 years ago. The story of how dogs came to be so closely associated with humans is open to debate. Bottlenecks and selective sweeps during domestication have increased deleterious genetic variation in dogs. 100 Years of Breed “Improvement” | Science of Dogs. For the sake of honest disclosure, I will admit to owning “purebreds” (the ‘pureness’ of purebreeds is a discussion for another time) but I also have mutts. All the dogs I’ve had since childhood had a few things in common, they were friendly, prey driven, ball-crazy, intense, motivated, athletic (crazy dogs are easier to train) and none had intentionally bred defects.
I would never buy/adopt a dog whose breed characteristics exacted a health burden. (Asher 2009). That just incentivizes people to breed more of these intentionally unhealthy animals. The dogs on the left are from the 1915 book, ‘Breeds of All Nations‘ by W.E. Mason. It seems incredible that at one time the Bull Terrier was a handsome, athletic dog. The Basset Hound has gotten lower, has suffered changes to its rear leg structure, has excessive skin, vertebra problems, droopy eyes prone to entropion and ectropion and excessively large ears. A shorter face means a host of problems. Once a noble working dog, the modern St. Dog's epigenome gives clues to human cancer -- ScienceDaily. The bond between humans and dogs is strong and ancient. Dogs and people share many aspects of life.
The relationship between the two species has been studied by psychologists, anthropologists, ethnologists and also by genetic and molecular biologists. In this sense, dogs are a great model for understanding the causes of human diseases, especially cancer. Unlike other mammals used in research, dogs develop cancer spontaneously as humans do and cancer is the most common cause of death in this species. The dog genome has been sequenced, but we still don't know how it is controlled and regulated, what we call the epigenome. "We have characterized the epigenome level of each nucleotide of DNA of cells from the cocker species spaniel. In these canine cells we induced a morphological change similar to what happens in cancer progression and we have seen displayed significant alterations in the modulation of genes, called epigenetic lesions," says Manel Esteller.