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Thursday, March 28, 2024

How long does a dog live? Scientists create database to find out –

Science still doesn’t know exactly how long the average dog lives, because the number varies so much. To get an idea, large breeds tend to age much faster than small breeds, which can live up to 20 years. With that in mind, a group of scientists founded the Dog Aging Project, under the premise of understanding the issue in depth.

The project, which resulted in an article in the scientific journal nature, aims to build an open source database of thousands of dogs of all sizes, breeds and backgrounds to understand canine aging. One bet is that the dataset will provide veterinarians and scientists with the tools they need to assess how well a specific dog is aging.

“We are sequencing the genomes of 10,000 dogs. This will be one of the largest genetic datasets ever produced for dogs and will be a powerful resource, not only for understanding the role of genetics in aging, but also for answering more fundamental questions about the evolutionary history and domestication of dogs.” researcher Joshua Akey, involved in the project.

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The researchers hope to identify specific biomarkers of canine aging, and the idea is that this information will help to understand even human aging. Within a few months, the team plans to share the dataset with scientists around the world.

Within the project itself there is the “supercentennial” study, in which the group compares the DNA of dogs that lived for many years above average with the DNA of dogs that died at the average age. The proposal is to find the “secret” to this longevity.

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