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The Association between the Abundance of Homozygous Deleterious Variants and the Morbidity of Dog Breeds
1
Centre for Bioinnovation, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, QLD 4556, Australia
2
School of Science, Technology, and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast, Moreton Bay, QLD 4502, Australia
3
Centre for Tropical Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD 4502, Australia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Biology 2024, 13(8), 574; https://doi.org/10.3390/biology13080574 (registering DOI)
Submission received: 24 May 2024
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Revised: 26 July 2024
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Accepted: 27 July 2024
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Published: 29 July 2024
(This article belongs to the Section Genetics and Genomics)
Simple Summary
It is well known that highly inbred dogs are more prone to diseases than less inbred or outbred dogs. This is because inbreeding increases the number of bad mutations present in both paternal and maternal chromosomes (recessive mutations) of the dogs. Using the genome data from 392 dogs belonging to 83 breeds, we investigated the association between the abundance of recessive bad mutations and dog health. The frequency of visits to veterinary clinics for non-routine care was used as the measure of dog health. Our results revealed a highly significant positive relationship between the number of recessive harmful mutations and the degree of dog health. The dog breeds that required more veterinary care had two times higher harmful mutations than those that required less care. The results of this study could be useful for understanding the disease burden on breed dogs and as a guide for dog breeding programs.
Abstract
It is well known that highly inbred dogs are more prone to diseases than less inbred or outbred dogs. This is because inbreeding increases the load of recessive deleterious variants. Using the genomes of 392 dogs belonging to 83 breeds, we investigated the association between the abundance of homozygous deleterious variants and dog health. We used the number of non-routine veterinary care events for each breed to assess the level of morbidity. Our results revealed a highly significant positive relationship between the number of homozygous deleterious variants located within the runs of homozygosity (RoH) tracts of the breeds and the level of morbidity. The dog breeds with low morbidity had a mean of 87 deleterious SNVs within the RoH, but those with very high morbidity had 187 SNVs. A highly significant correlation was also observed for the loss-of-function (LoF) SNVs within RoH tracts. The dog breeds that required more veterinary care had 2.3 times more homozygous LoF SNVs than those that required less veterinary care (112 vs. 50). The results of this study could be useful for understanding the disease burden on breed dogs and as a guide for dog breeding programs.
Keywords:
inbreeding; morbidity; deleterious SNVs; RoH; population bottleneck; small populations
