I recently adopted an abused dog from the local shelter. She was severely underweight, had kennel cough and a hip deformity due to malnutrition Now that she is at fighting weight, happy and healthy, I am curious as to her breed. The shelter called her an affenpinscher mix and although I do see a little affenpinscher in her shape and coat, she has a longer snout and a long tail. I saw advertised DNA tests that can be done on dogs to determine the top few breeds in a mutt. Is this something that is a scam or do labs exist with the technology that have hundreds of breeds DNA in their data banks and can figure this out? Is there any information on how accurate these kinds of tests are?
I’m sure there are some genetic markers that are more prevalent in dog breed A, B, and C, but that doesn’t mean that breeds D, E and F don’t also carry them. Since your dog is a mutt, she’s likely to have prevalent genes from all kinds of breeds. These tests can give you a statistical likelihood that “since 80% of Breed D dogs carry gene ABC123, your dog likely is part Breed D!!” but my understanding is that breeds aren’t really all that distinguishable by DNA when it comes down to it. It may come, but I don’t believe we are there yet.
From what I’ve seen, the tests are pretty worthless.
They essentially do what mnemosyne said, and work about like that.
I know I saw some review where they’d sent samples from dogs of known breeding. I can’t remember the numbers, but the accuracy of the results they got back was terrible.
Heard a lot of negatives on them. Some claim the tests your vet can get for you are more reliable. Might be fun if you don’t mind the expense.
Actually there’s a tremendous amount of very high quality research characterizing breed genetics. The sorts of markers that people use to determine ancestry and breeding are called “haplotypes”, and a quick pubmed search pulls up lots of useful information (though some is only tangentially relevant). With sufficient resources, we could tell you a huge amount of information about the ancestry of your particular mutt. That basically entails getting a full genome sequence of your dog, which is becoming routine in research labs, with a few thousand dollar price tag.
Commercial services aren’t yet anywhere near that advanced though. They’re probably testing a very small set of markers based on older, more limited data. I don’t have any specific knowledge of the commercial tests for dogs. But for humans, commercial ancestry genotyping gives very coarse information, say that you’re ancestry is 30% Asian, 20% African, and 50% European.
I believe the percentage is what this is offering as well. http://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Panel-Insights-Mixed-Breed/dp/B002QC9WDQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320349952&sr=8-1.
Apparently this is a sample of what you can expect (pdf). Those are some vague-ass results, there. I don’t even see a description of the underlying science on their website. Personally, I wouldn’t trust such testing unless they made at least a token effort at explaining where their results come from. I.e. “we test a panel of 1000 markers (here’s the list), which can be used to determine breed ancestry according to these peer-reviewed studies (list)”. Without that, frankly, the could just make shit up. I wonder if any of these consumer tests have been verified in any way?
But genetics is part of what I do for a living, which means I’m a huge dork for raw data. And criticizing data is also something I do every day. Perhaps you’d be perfectly happy with their product.
Hey lazybratsche, as long as you’re handy…
So those human commercial genotyping services, how accurate are they?
I mean, in your example, if they say my ancestry is 30% Asian, 20% African, and 50% European, then is that pretty solid, if rather nonspecific?
I’m wondering because my BiL got this done and it showed completely unexpected results. IIRC, it said he had a significant percentage of Ashkenazic ancestry, when by family history that’s not possible.
It’s not a big deal to him, he actually seemed rather amused by it. Just made me curious as to how accurate those things are. Especially with the reviews I’d seen of the pet services.
I think I am going to go for it just for fun and report back. I know that she is mostly affenpinscher, it is pretty obvious. So if it doesn’t come back with a hit on that, or at least brussel griffon or the like, I know it isn’t all that accurate. The paperwork asks for age and weight so I feel like I am giving them hints, like a “psychic” would get to make it easier for them to guess. If I say she is over a year and 9lbs, they aren’t going to come up with great dane/german sheppard mix.
Please report back.
We bought one of the tests from Amazon for our shelter rescue a few years ago. We had a couple of good guesses as to her breed mix, but that can be a hard game to play. When we bought the test, we weren’t deluding ourselves as to the infallability of it…it was just a “for fun” thing.
But I will admit, the results it returned were surprisingly reasonable. They reported with fair confidence that our dog—the one with the Doberman size, colors and markings, the hound dog ears and the scent-hound personality—was basically half Doberman, half beagle. And you’d never doubt that assessment for a second if you met her.
Does that mean a damn thing? No. But you could take it as a weak bit of anecdotal evidence that the tests aren’t just a big pile of WAG.
Well, I’ve seen anecdotal reports of fantastically improbable results, but never done it myself.
I used a company called Wisdom Panel Insights. Had to swap the inside of Maggie’s cheeks and send two samples. The tests was supposed to take 3 weeks but the results were emailed to me in half that time.
The results are… drum roll…
Half Chihuahua going back for generations and half shih tzu/mini poodle mix from one pure breed shih tzu and one pure breed miniture poodle. So, a mutt. Which we knew.
No affenpinscher in her at all according to their results. We suspected an “affenhuahua” because when we googled affenpinscher/chihuahua mix, we came up with a couple of dogs that looked just like her. Maybe the shelter who called her an affenpinscher mix did the same.
The results are totally believable and I would not say I was ripped off of my 60 dollars. I may send my “pure” brussel griffon’s dna to test next. Just because I was very curious and still feel like I don’t know if this is accurate or not.
I first heard about these tests when I was talking to somebody about her dog. The animal in question looked a lot like a Welsh Corgi, and I asked if it had some Corgi in it. She told me she’d thought so to, but she had one of these tests done, and they reported back with 4 breeds, none of them Welsh Corgi. Two of the breeds were Dachshund and Border Collie, which I suppose could be a recipe for obtaining a faux Corgi.
I used the $60 Wisdom Panel from Amazon also. Turned out, it’s the same DNA test my vet’s office uses, and they charge twice as much.
The results were right on target: 100% cairn terrier. The pound people had predicted correctly, even though the dog was found running loose, with no tags, collar or microchip. I’d still like to have a better handle on her age, but all we can do is estimate. Too bad there’s no Wisdom panel for that!
We really need a few people to do that. Hummmm, I may be sitting a known, deliberately bred Lab/Shepherd over Christmas.
I decided to send my other two dogs DNA in to see if they are as “pure” as their breeders claimed. Both the Brussels Griffon and the Affenpinscher showed 100% back as far as their grandparents so I would officially recommend the test as accurate. Those are pretty rare breeds and would be one hell of a guess just by knowing the weight.