September 26, 2003
A dog's life
Maybe one day there will be a genomic explanation for this....
Man’s best friend, in this case a male poodle, is genetically more similar to humans than is the mouse, a more commonly used laboratory animal, according to researchers who have completed the first rough draft sequence of the genes of a dog.Posted by Alan at September 26, 2003 12:03 AMEwen F. Kirkness of the institute for Genomic Research, the first author of the study, said that genetic sequence is important for medical research because dogs share about 360 of the same genetic disorders that are known in humans.
Dogs, he said, are second only to humans in the thoroughness of medical understanding and research. Also, Kirkness said the dog is much more genetically similar to humans than is the mouse, even though mice and humans are closer together on the tree of evolution.
via MSNBC