Reply To: What info do I get from my dog's sequence?

[Jennifer]

It seems like most of the genetic tests commercially available nowadays, whether from UC Davis or Embark or whatever, will at least give you a rundown of your dog’s genotype for several of the genes presently known to be associated with certain physical traits–coat pattern and texture, overall body size (numerous genes involved in that) etc., in addition to level of inbreeding. And Darwin’s Ark is looking at much more of the genome than any of those tests, so I’d imagine(?) all of that info and more would be available. How “useful” that info is would depend on your interests–like, I’d be curious to know if my dog might be merle (she has very little black coat pigment, so I can’t reliably tell by looking) because if she were it might explain some odd quirks about her coat patterning and eye color, but I don’t know that that’d really be “useful” info so much as personally interesting to me. But what’s really exciting to me about this study is not so much anything I’d learn about Luna specifically–I already know her behavioral quirks, and as far as it goes no DNA test is going to help me manage those–but rather the opportunity to contribute in some small way to furthering scientists’ understanding of the genetic bases of dog behavior, which in the long run could be very helpful for breeders too.