What is your dog's lifespan? You might be surprised
The Dog Aging Project is gathering a vast open-source dataset about
canine health and longevity
Date:
February 2, 2022
Source:
Princeton University
Summary:
The Dog Aging Project, founded in 2018, is by far the most
ambitious project tackling the question of canine longevity,
enrolling and studying tens of thousands of dogs of all sizes,
breeds and backgrounds to develop a thorough understanding of
canine aging. Their open-source dataset will give veterinarians
and scientists the tools to assess how well a specific dog is aging
and will set the stage for further research into healthy aging --
in both dogs and people. One of their most intriguing avenues of
inquiry will analyze the DNA of exceptionally long-lived dogs,
the 'super-centenarians' of the dog world.
FULL STORY ==========================================================================
How old is your dog in human years? And what factors contribute to a
long and healthy life for a dog?
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For years, it's been generally accepted that "dog years" are roughly human years times seven -- that a 1-year-old puppy is like a 7-year-old child,
and an 11-year-old elderly dog is like a 77-year-old senior citizen. But
it's actually much more complicated, say experts.
Part of the problem is that while humans have clear metrics for healthy
aging, little is known about "normal aging" for our four-legged
friends. Big dogs tend to age the fastest -- maybe 10 times faster
than humans -- while little breeds may live to be 20 years old, with
"dog years" about five times human years.
The Dog Aging Project, founded in 2018, is by far the most ambitious
project tackling the question of canine longevity, enrolling and studying
tens of thousands of dogs of all sizes, breeds and backgrounds to develop
a thorough understanding of canine aging. Their open-source dataset
will give veterinarians and scientists the tools to assess how well a
specific dog is aging and will set the stage for further research into
healthy aging -- in both dogs and people.
The researchers detailed their project and its potential implications
for both human and veterinary medicine in an article published in the
current issue of the journal Nature. One of their most intriguing avenues
of inquiry will analyze the DNA of exceptionally long-lived dogs, the "super-centenarians" of the dog world.
"This is a very large, ambitious, wildly interdisciplinary project that
has the potential to be a powerful resource for the broader scientific community," said Joshua Akey, a professor in Princeton's Lewis-Sigler
Institute for Integrative Genomics and a member of the Dog Aging Project's research team. "Personally, I find this project exciting because I think
it will improve dog, and ultimately, human health." Akey, a dog lover
with a 5-year-old rescue dog named Abby and a 1-year-old purebred lab
named Zoey, co-leads the genetics analyses with Elinor Karlsson at the
Broad Institute.
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"We are sequencing the genomes of 10,000 dogs," Akey said. "This will
be one of the largest genetics data sets ever produced for dogs, and it
will be a powerful resource not only to understand the role of genetics
in aging, but also to answer more fundamental questions about the
evolutionary history and domestication of dogs." The Dog Aging Project
(DAP) expects to run for at least 10 years. To date, more than 32,000
dogs have joined the "DAP Pack," as the researchers call their canine
citizen scientists.
"We are still recruiting dogs of all ages, all breeds -- purebred or
mixed breeds, all sizes, all across the United States," said William Thistlethwaite, a graduate student who works with Akey in the Lewis-Sigler Institute.
"Especially puppies and young dogs up to 3 years old." When a dog
joins the Pack, their owners agree to fill out annual surveys and take measurements of their dogs for the duration of the project; some may be
asked to collect cheek swabs for DNA sampling. In addition, the DAP team
works with veterinarians across the country who assist by submitting fur, fecal, urine and blood samples of select Pack members.
The researchers hope to identify specific biomarkers of canine aging. They anticipate that their findings will translate to human aging, for several reasons: Dogs experience nearly every functional decline and disease
of aging that people do; the extent of veterinary care parallels human healthcare in many ways; and our dogs share our lived environments,
a major determinant of aging and one that cannot be replicated in any
lab setting.
========================================================================== "Given that dogs share the human environment and have a sophisticated
health care system but are much shorter-lived than people, they offer a
unique opportunity to identify the genetic, environmental and lifestyle
factors associated with healthy lifespan," said Dr. Daniel Promislow,
the principal investigator for the National Institute on Aging grant
that funds the project and a professor of biology at the University of Washington (UW) College of Arts and Sciences and of laboratory medicine
and pathology at the UW School of Medicine.
In particular, the researchers want to look at 300 oldest dogs in the
Pack to see if they can identify the keys to their longevity. "One part
of the project that I am super excited about is a 'super-centenarian'
study, comparing the DNA of exceptionally long-lived dogs to dogs that
live to the average age for their breed," said Akey, the Princeton
geneticist. "This is the first study of its kind in dogs (to my
knowledge), and I think it's a clever way of trying to find genetic
differences that contribute to exceptional longevity." Within a few
months, the team plans to open their enormous dataset -- fully anonymized
-- to share with scientists around the world. Researchers from many
different fields will have the opportunity to contribute to the study
in countless different ways, based on their interests.
"It is an honor to share our work with the scientific community,"
said Kate Creevy, lead author on the paper and DAP's chief veterinary
officer. "The Dog Aging Project is creating a resource with the power to transform veterinary medicine, aging research, and many scientific and non-scientific fields of inquiry." For more information, or to learn how
to enroll your dog in the ongoing project:
https://dogagingproject.org
The Dog Aging Project is supported by the National Institute on Aging
(grant U19AG057377), a part of the National Institutes of Health, and
by private donations.
special promotion Get a free digital "Metabolism Myths"
issue of New Scientist and discover the 7 things we
always get wrong about diet and exercise. Claim_yours_now_>>> ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Princeton_University. Original written
by Liz Fuller- Wright. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Kate E. Creevy, Joshua M. Akey, Matt Kaeberlein, Daniel
E.L. Promislow
and The Dog Aging Project Consortium. The Dog Aging Project: an
Open Science study of ageing in companion dogs. Nature, 2022 DOI:
10.1038/ s41586-021-04282-9 ==========================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220202111843.htm
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