Another lesson is that the three populations are genetically different. Whether in relation to other stray dogs, but also between themselves. Some dogs have traces of DNA belonging to the three groups studied. “Genetic differentiation from other purebred and free-roaming dogs suggests that Chernobyl populations have a unique genomic signature,” detail the researchers. Enough to offer geneticists a “raw materialunpublished for future work.
“Now that they have perfectly described the distribution areas of the dogs, the genetic structure of the different populations, this team has an adequate tool to go further and, for example, analyze on these populations the effect of radiation on a thirty years. What enabled these lines of dogs to resist it? Personally, I think that the genes involved in the repair of their DNA must have been more effective in a hostile situation than in a lambda dog which will not have survived”explained to Science and Future Christophe Hittefrom the Dog Genetics team (IGDR, Rennes).