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Article: Mutant collies!(Science Scoops)(dogs)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Evening Standard (London, England)
- Article date:
- January 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Carus Publishing Co. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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They're all dogs! Believe it or not, intelligent collies, graceful whippets, and Old English sheepdogs may be related! That's right. After Mark W. Neff (University of California, Davis) and his colleagues studied a single mutated gene (called MDR1) in collies, they discovered the same one in several other "pure" breeds--including longhaired whippets, miniature Australian shepherds, silken windhounds, and perhaps standard Australian shepherds, Old English sheepdogs, McNabs, and Shetland sheepdogs. The researchers traced the gene back to a single animal that lived in England prior to the 1870s!
How can this be? Today, we take pure-breed dogs seriously. But before ...