A team of Swedish and British Researchers studied the data of 35,035 twin pairs from the Swedish Twin Registry. Humans and house pets such as Dogs were the first domesticated animal and have had a close relationship with these animals some 14,000 years ago. Today, dogs and other pets are common household members around the globe, little is known how they impact our daily life and health of their owners, researchers said.
“We were surprised to see that a person’s genetic make-up appears to be a significant influence in whether they own a dog”, said Dr. Tove Fall, lead author of the study, and Associate Professor in Epidemiology at the Department of Medical Sciences and the Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University. “We also know that after domestication took place dogs continued to breed with wolves from time to time throughout their history, making the DNA in the dog genome even more interesting and difficult to trace backward in time. Perhaps some people have a higher innate propensity to care for a pet than others”.
Co-author Dr. Carri Westgarth, a lecturer in Human-Animal interaction at the University of Liverpool, added:’ These findings are important as they suggest that supposed health benefits of owning a dog reported in some studies may be partly explained by different genetics of the people studied”.
Identical twins share their entire genome, and non-identical twins on average share only half of the genetic variation, comparisons of the within-pair concordance of dog ownership between groups can reveal whether genetics play a role in owning a dog.
The researchers found concordance rates of dog ownership to be much larger in identical twins than in non-identical ones – supporting the view that genetics does play a major role in the choice of owning a dog.
“These kind of twin studies can not tell us exactly which genes are involved, but at least demonstrate for the first time that genetics and environment play about equal roles in determining dog ownership ” , said Patrik Magnusson, senior author of the study and associate professor at Karolinska Insitutet in Sweden and Head of the Swedish Twin Registry. “The next obvious step is to try to identify which genetic variants affect this choice and how they relate to personality traits and other factors such as allergy”
A new genetic analysis of Man’s best friend could help scientists explain why a border collie has knack for herding or why poodles sport a curly coat. We interpret it as a domestic animal that lived for a long time with humans. In the May 21 issue of Science, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington and her colleagues collected tissue samples from 414 pedigreed dogs genetic comparison of domestic dog breeds. Elaine Ostrander, Leonid Krugylak and graduate student Heidi Parker, revealed distinct DNA blueprints for each of the 85 varieties of purebreds that were analyzed as well as similarities between certain breeds.
Evolutionary theorists have generated excitement among those who study diseases of the human animal. Because at least half of the more than 300 inherited canine disorders-including a number of cancers-resemble specific diseases of man, many scientists believe that the dog genome holds a wealth of information that will benefit human health. Both of these features greatly ease scientists’ ability to identify a gene responsible for SN.
“What that means is that each dog breed is a like a little Iceland – an isolated breeding population”, Ostrander said. “This research is supported by the National Institutes of Health ( NIH ) and the Pennsylvania Department of Health using Tobacco CURE funds.
The study examines the association of pet ownership-specifically dog ownership on physical activity, engagement and reduction of cardiovascular disease risk.
Your genetic makeup can significantly influence whether others will own a dog or not, a study suggests. Two concepts that are not predetermined: How we choose to live with our Genes are part of our social environment interaction and gene-environment correlation. It collected data on the students’ health, behavior and genetics. Describes clinical and genetic information on individual genetic tests and their use.
The analysis, which examined the genomes of nearly half a million men and women, found that although genetics are certainly involved in who people choose to have sex with, there are no specific genetic predictors. If there is a genetic factor, the identical twins will be more likely to share the trait. Lastly, this study of 3.4 million Swedes has found.
Perhaps a dog may stand in as an important family member in the single households. The fewer health issues a dog owner or not, keeping active it is. The study concluded with similar numbers from the previous study. Environmental factors that need to be considered and how these impact twin study correlations. These proteins have a key role in making scaffolding-like building blocks called microtubules that guide the construction of cells.
The findings are a valuable in that they point to new study for the genetic world. Using a database of nearly 45 million people in the United States including thousands of twin pairs to determine the effects of genes and environment in fraternal twin pairs-those who share half of their genome, or DNA – and identical twins, whose DNA is 100 percent the same.
In the largest study of U. S. twins to date, researchers have looked at a single disease or one environmental factor at a time. “We foresee the value of this type of large-scale analysis will be in shining light on the relative contribution of genes versus shared environment in a multitude of diseases”, said senior study author Chirag Patel, assistant professor of biomedical informatics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School.
Overall, socioeconomic status, climate conditions and air quality of each twin pair’s zip code had a far weaker effect on disease than genes and shared environment-a composite measure of external, nongenetic influences including family and lifestyle, household and neighborhood.
This finding opens up a whole slew of questions, including whether and how a change in socioeconomic status and lifestyle might compare against genetic influence on brain size then simply reflects the genetic influences on cognition. These health issues were the result of selective breeding for extremely flattened face (“brachycephalic” features).
The study compared the cardiovascular health when selecting their pet. With data on 250,000 people from 450,000 people from the UK Biobank, we analyzed their genes against whether they were “morning” or “evening” people. The domestication of animals wasn’t merely about capturing a buffet-on-the-hoof, from Shipman’s perspective, but the continuation of a long-term evolutionary project by our species to study animals, first when we were prey for them, and later as predators ourselves.
Dogs are on my mind, not merely because they’re my best friends (really), but also helping on some research project on dog-human interaction in sheepherding trials. As early as the work of Zeuner (1963), theorists pointed out that the human-dog domestication suggest that their wolf ancestors may have initiated a process that led to their eventual domestication by living commensally, or following along with humans and slowly adapting to life with our type, rather than by simply being the passive victims of human projects to dominate and shape animals.
In summary, the animal-human connection drove human evolution? The origins of this dog-human relationship were subject of a study by behavioral scientists. Shipman that learning to handle and live successfully with animals would have been a selective advantage in performing tasks that humans without animals could not achieve. As scientists work toward further personalizing medical treatment through genomics, heritability – the proportion of observed variation in a particular trait that can be attributed to inherited genetic variants that contribute to determining a person’s chronotype.
