[ad_1]
A canine genomics expert at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. According to Ostrander, there isn’t a single gene that determines dog size. There are about 25 of them. He and other scientists In 2007 he found the first known dog size gene and one of the most important.. Its name is IGF1. The importance of the gene has been confirmed in many studies. But it wasn’t clear how it affected size.
Dr. “The thorn in my side,” Ostrander said, is that no one has been able to find a mutation in the gene or the stretches of DNA that controls it to explain what the actual changes in the DNA of the affected size are. “It’s not an exon, it’s not a promoter. This is not a booster. “It’s not a splice site,” he said, referring to the sections of DNA that control genes. “We couldn’t find it. And Joc (pronounced Joss) arrived on the scene.”
“And I found it.” he said, smiling.
Working at the NIH at the time of the research and currently at the University of Rennes 1 in France, Dr. Plassais said it’s great luck to be working at a time when so many canine and other canid genomes are modern. and ancient, available. So, by comparing more than a thousand genomes from more than 200 different races, he found a stretch of DNA that comes in two size-dependent versions or variants.
This piece of DNA is not a gene because by definition a gene must contain the instructions for making proteins. But many other pieces of DNA have instructions for bits of RNA that help control genes. He found a stretch of DNA called anti-sense RNA, with instructions that play an important role in controlling the production of proteins specified by genes.
His invention is called IGF1-AS and it has two variants. Every dog has two copies of this DNA. Two large variants make a large dog like a German shepherd. Two smaller variants make a small dog like a miniature schnauzer and each makes a medium sized dog like one of the dusty colored village dogs seen all over the world.
[ad_2]
Source link