The dog genome.

Over the last few centuries, several hundred dog breeds have been artificially selected through intense breeding, resulting in the modern dog population having the widest polymorphism spectrum in terms of body shape, behavior and aptitude among mammals. Unfortunately, this diversification has predisposed most breeds to specific diseases of genetic origin. The highly fragmented nature of the dog population offers a great opportunity to track the genes and alleles responsible for these diseases as well as for the various phenotypic traits. This has led to a thorough analysis of the dog genome. Here, we report the main results obtained during the last ten years, culminating in the recent publication of a complete dog genome sequence.