[brittney logan]

Scott,

Since you have not yet received a kit, you will see on the profile the options to “order a kit” or “join free kit waitlist” Please click on whichever you would prefer and we will get the kit your way!

[brittney logan]

Mary,

Since the webpage and our database was down during the transition we were not able to scan in the incoming kits that were mailed to us, so the status on your profile did not yet change. We are working on now scanning all of the kits that came to us in. The statue there will change very soon, we are working on playing catch up after this big transition! Thank you for checking though, and for your patience.

[brittney logan]

Hi Jamie,

We have made Darwin’s Ark into a non-profit in order to help combat the wait time and grant funding issues. This is strictly research and grants do take time. With thousands of participants we could not sequence them all at once hence the long wait times, so our solution was to make it so that participants have the option if they would like to fund their dogs sample at various levels in order to get the sample out more quickly for sequencing, and therefore receive the results faster.

This of course is optional, and participants are still more than welcome to participate for free, it just means a difference in wait time. We do plan to sequence all samples that come into us! I have checked your information and in your case since you have answered all of the behavior questions and we have your dogs DNA sample here, if you wish to get the results faster it would only be $99.00 which again is completely up to you.

I hope this helps, we have made this change in order to make the webpage more informational, user friendly and make things run more smoothly. Please let me know if there is anything else I can help to answer or clarify. We thank you so much for your participation and patience in this canine behavioral genetics research!

[brittney logan]

Hi Vivian,

Thank you very much for sending along your other dogs Embark results so that we can take a look at the comparison! You and your son are more than welcome to send along the other Embark results. Please email it to Brittney@darwinsark.org

[brittney logan]

Hi Norma,

We are working on getting the kits scanned in since the webpage and database has been down recently. Ernie’s sample has not yet been sent out for sequencing. As you may have seen, we have now made Darwin’s Ark into a non-profit! This means that you can fund your dogs sample to be sent out much more quickly and therefore get the results back faster. This of course is optional, please check out our FAQ page to learn more about our new options for owners! 🙂

FAQs

Please let me know if you have any further questions, happy to help and clarify!

[brittney logan]

Hi Scott, I have checked your information and you are eligible for a kit. We apologize for the long wait. We had run out of our original stock of kits and had to order more. They will be ready very soon to be sent our to waiting participants! We appreciate your patiences, thank you.

[brittney logan]

Hi Geri,

In order to become eligible to receive a kit, please fill out at least 10/21 of the behavior surveys on your dogs profile. We do encourage participants to fill out all 21 though so that we have ample information about your dog. Once you have completed the surveys and have a mailing address on your profile, you will automatically go into our queue to receive a DNA kit. Please know that we are a bit backlogged and there is a waiting list depending upon when people enrolled and became eligible. We are doing the best we can to get kits out to all eligible participants, but we kindly ask for your patience since we are a grant funded research group.

[brittney logan]

Thank you very much for your participation! We do in fact have grant money to research canine allergies, and are certainly hoping to better understand what is going on.

[brittney logan]

Hi there,

This research project is focusing on correlating behavior and genetics, as well as improving algorithms to tell ancestry of your dog. We constantly working on determining new and improve techniques to better understand our four-legged friends. We are not like DNA testing businesses, we have a much different goal. There are many things that slow down research, especially when it comes to grant money. We can only send out about 300-500 sample when allowed a this point.

To combat the money issue, we are making Darwin’s Dogs into a nonprofit in the very near future, so owners can donate to their dogs sample to speed up the pipeline process. This of course is optional. Once a sample is sent out for sequencing, we will receive raw data which we then need to do computational work on to make sense of it all and then report it back to you. The first information we will be able to determine is what we call “breed calling” which will tell you the ancestry of your dog. Then beings the journey of trying to correlate the behavior and genetics, which has never been done before. I wish I could tell you an exact date to expect results, but with research like this, it cannot be rushed. I hope this helps to better paint a picture of how this process work and why it is taking time. We greatly appreciate your participation and patience with this research!

When results are ready, we will upload it to your Darwin’s Dogs profile so it will all be electronic.

[brittney logan]

Hi David, thank you for joining our research! We are welcoming any breed or mix to participate in this research, there are not qualification standards in order to participate. We are very interested in looking at the difference in behavior and genetics between each dog individually. The first information that we will be able to tell from the DNA results is what are call “breed calling data” which is a graph that will tell you the ancestry of your dog. Then we begin the longer journey of trying to find correlations between behavior and genetics. As, you mentioned, this is research and could take some time as it has never been done before! We are doing our best to keep things going in a timely manner, but science cannot be rushed. Thank you very much for your participation and interest in this canine behavioral genetics research!

[brittney logan]

Hi Jennifer, no you do not have to worry it is here. We have had such a large amount of kits coming in at once that we just have not gotten to all of them to be scanned in and processed. We are hoping to catch up this week! Thank you for checking in.

[brittney logan]

Hi everyone, first off thank you for participating in our Mutt Mix Project! I think many of your questions/concerns can be answered by the Mutt Mix FAQ.

You will see that we had to use a reference panel to sequence the dogs and that is why there is a limited list of breeds to choose from.

http://iaabcprojects.org/faq/

[brittney logan]

Hi Irene and Emily, we are using swabs from DNA Genotek which has a purple solution that keeps the DNA stable for years. We are confident in collaborating with them that the DNA will remain stable until sequenced.

[brittney logan]

Hi Jennifer, great questions. The answer to them is yes, the result format that you are seeing on our Mutt Mix project is the same format we will use for Darwin’s Dogs results. We plan to have the “breed call” information in the donut plot format with the percentages of each breed. We also plan to have much more detailed information about your dogs genetics, such as the genes responsible for fur color etc. Currently, we are working on Darwin’s Dogs (which will be rename Darwin’s Ark) new and improved look by recreating the webpage, which means improving how we will share your results. We are excited to launch the new webpage in the next few months!

[brittney logan]

Hi Car2ner,

Thank you for participating in our Mutt Mix project! We are so excited to see what people guessed, and yes you are correct, by the end of the two months we will share with you the breed results for each dog.

For other participants that may not have heard about it, check it out and guess away at these mixed dogs!

http://www.muttmix.org

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