New insights in human brain tumors thanks to dogs
A research team led by Kerstin Lindblad-Toh at Uppsala University/SciLifeLab has used genetic analyses of 25 different dog breeds to identify genes that could have a role in the development of brain tumors. The researchers could identify an area in the genome that differed between diseased and healthy dogs. In this area of the genome the researchers then identified three genes as the most associated with the development of glioma in dogs.
Humans have the same genes as the ones identified by the researchers in dogs. They therefore went on to determine whether there was also a link between the identified genes and human glioma. These results indicate that further investigations of the role of these three genes in glioma development would be of interest, with potential benefit to both dogs and humans.
The gene sequencing was performed at SNP&SEQ Technology Platform at SciLifeLab and the bioinformatics analysis were partly performed at the SciLifeLab Bioinformatics Platform.
The study was published in PLOS Genetics.
