During my time in Genetics Lab, I found out about someone special. Her name is Tasha the boxer. This female boxer dog was the first canine to have its entire genome sequenced. What makes Tasha special is that its specific breed had little variation in its genome, which makes it a reliable reference genome sequence for public use all around the globe. Tasha has a brown coat with a white underside. The skin around the nose droops past the mouth, giving a bulldog-like look. Its nose and mouth are black. Her face is mainly white starting from the t-zone of the forehead and moves down the face, with a black perimeter around its facial extremities. It’s forehead and ears are brown. I’d imagine the dog is taller than knee-height, but shorter than the waist. Genomic sequencing of Tasha allows scientists to create a “blueprint for how complex traits [evolve] in all breeds of dogs.” Although dogs are less closely related to humans than other mammals, such as chimps, evolutionary biologists can test their hypothesis against Tasha’s reference genome to see how mammals had evolved. “Much of the non-coding DNA in dogs is the same as that in humans,” indicating there is more to what meets the eye.
https://www.nature.com/news/2005/051205/full/051205-6.html
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8430-boxer-is-first-dog-to-have-f...
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