Rip
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Jun 2003
Location: Morrison TN
Posts: 4927 |
Justin, I have a good background in genetics and I have researched this a little.
You notice I did say that when they do finish the genome and IF they can map out which genes are for which traits THEN it will be useful.
Yes, all my dogs are DNA'd because it does prove parentage, but that's all it does because the markers are just that MARKERS, not genes so that a chiwawa can have the same markers as a hairless breed, same as a Great Pyrenese, same as a hound or mutt. In reality the last time I personally talked to the genetics lab they were using 28 markers, but our papers only show 10 of those, the 10 with the greatest percentage of being accurate.
Those markers were studied and used because they are common to ALL dogs, not hunting dogs.
That's why it's impossible to use those markers for anything else, first the scale is so small compared to the size of the dogs genome and you have to remember they are NOT genes, just markers. Second the markers they chose had to be very rudimentary and common to all dogs, not just working dogs. The marker itself may be an amino acid close to the genetic sequence that codes for the dog to have 4 legs, something that rudimentary.
Don't confuse markers with genes. Say they didn't use rudimentary markers, say they actuall did accidentally use a marker beside a miracle gene that encoded for treeing (note traits are not one gene, but to make it simple we'll say there is a miracle gene that is tree or not tree).
Lets call that gene T for tree, the marker they picked is the transcription factor promotor on the gene beside of T so on the papers to make it simple they call that particular marker P so that if the dog has the promotor in that spot then it will get a P if not it will get a small p. The problem is both T and t need the transcription factor so that dogs that would tree AND dogs that would not tree would have that promotor sequence to tell the ribosome to place either a T or t there when the DNA is being transcribed. One dog has the tree gene T, one has the no tree gene t, but on your DNA profile both dogs will show the exact same letter PP because they both had the promotor in that location, even though one had the good gene and one had the bad. That's the difference in using markers instead of genes.
That said, I do agee that genetics is the way to go, just saying you can't use the markers we have for anything except parentage.
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Last edited by Rip on 04-06-2009 at 01:02 AM
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04-05-2009 02:27 AM
