Some breeders may be barking up the wrong genetic tree
By Peter Gorner
Tribune science reporter

The first detailed analysis of the genes of purebred dogs has revealed surprising facts about the relationships, ancestries and origins of breeds that introduce the cold eye of genetics into some deeply held romantic myths.
The study, published Friday in the journal Science, compared the genetic profiles of 85 breeds and could one day help explain a border collie's inborn passion for herding, a Newfoundland's love of water or the curly coat of poodles.
But some breeds turn out to be neither as old nor as pure as commonly presumed and may be closely related to breeds that look and act completely different.
The pharoah hound is not 5.000 years old, as some of its breeders claim, but is a fairly young breed.
The wrinkly Shar-Pei, it turns
out, is much closer to its wolf ancestors than is the German shepherd.
And owners of Belgian Tervurens and Belgian sheepdogs, two separate breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club,
might be surprised to learn that the dogs are genetically identical.
Scientists have now determined that each breed has a distinct genetic profile that can be used for DNA certification and reliable verification of registration records.
In fact, it soon may be possible to determine a beloved mutt's ancestry and susceptibility to diseases from its genotype.

But the research extends beyond canines and their enthusiasts—the dog genome is believed to hold a wealth of information that will benefit human health.
The first gene map of purebreds was compiled by geneticists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, who worked with hundreds of dog enthusiasts from across the country
Evidence suggests that people first bred dogs from wolves in the vicinity of China about 15,000 years ago. No other creature has proven to be so diverse.
Dogs have blossomed into hundreds of specialized breeds with only a few genetic changes—the difference between a tiny Chihuahua and a Great Dane is only a few genes, according to scientists.
The multiplicity of dog breeds reflects differing human tastes, needs and sense of style. Fanciers of toy breeds, for instance, may smile frostily at a St. Bernard owner, who, in turn, thinks they're wimps.
"In all the research on dogs, the question keeps coming up how modern dogs are related to each other genetically," said the lead author of the study, cancer researcher Elaine Ostrander, a border collie fan.
"The answer has important implications for trying to identify disease genes. Dogs and people share the same diseases. If we know that a subset of breeds have a common lineage, then we know to group them together when we're working on a specific disease, like heart disease, cancer or epilepsy," Ostrander said.
"Thus, our statistical power for gene-finding in complex diseases increases enormously"
The geneticists relied on assistance from the American Kennel Club (ARC) and hundreds of dog breeders and owners across the nation who voluntarily provided cheek-swab DNA samples from 414 registered animals at AKC sanctioned events, specialty events and mail-in donations.
"The first major finding was that the different breeds are quite genetically distinct," said Leonid Kruglyak, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher at Hutchinson.
"The dogs of a particular breed are much more similar to one another than they are to dogs of different breeds. We merely could feed a dog's genetic pattern into the computer and the computer could match it to the breed."
That surprised the researchers because most of the breeds were formally isolated genetically only in the 19th Century, when breed clubs were founded and breed standards established.
The gene analysis disclosed previously unknown relationships between existing breeds and found that completely unexpected breeds are among the most direct descendants of the dog's wolf-like ancestors.
On the basis of genetic variation, the researchers grouped the dogs into three relatively recent categories (associated with guarding, hunting and herding) and an older group dating to antiquity that originated in Asia or Africa at least 2,000 years ago.
When the geneticists clustered the breeds whose genes showed shared lineages, they found that the more-ancient breeds—such as the basenji, Saluki, Afghan, Lhasa apso, Pekingese, Shar-Pei, Shih Tzu, Akita, Alaskan malamute, Siberian husky and Samoyed—had the closest genetic relationship to the wolf ancestors.
"What's closest to a wolf, a German shepherd or a wrinkled Chinese Shar-Pei? Most people would say the shepherd," Ostrander said.
But the shepherd turned out to belong to a group often used as guard dogs.
The researchers found that several breeds thought to be ancient were actually re-creations developed at the same time as modern European breeds—the pharaoh hound and the Ibizan hound, for example, appear to be modern versions modeled after dogs depicted on the walls of Egyptian tombs.