National Specialty

June 8th - 12th, 2010

National Saluki Specialty

Seminar
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Genetics as a Lens for Viewing the Unique Biology of the Saluki
with Dr Mark Neff


Genetics holds promise for elucidating the basis of inherited disease in the dog. Gene discoveries can be translated into DNA tests that inform breeding decisions to reduce or even eliminate certain diseases. The same molecular approaches used to understand hereditary disease can also be applied to illuminate the traits that help define a breed's standard. This is biologically important because the profound diversity in size, shape, and behavior across breeds will help us better understand basic biological processes, which is a prerequisite for truly making sense of the defects in disease etiologies. Understanding pointing or lure-coursing, for example, will help to establish the basic rules by which genes govern behavior. This in turn will lay the groundwork for deciphering how these rules are broken in human mental illness and psychiatric disease. In this talk, I will frame the unique biological attributes of the Saluki that are of particular interest to biologists, and discuss ongoing research into the basis of these traits, as well as the root causes of hereditary diseases such as cancer susceptibility.

Biography: Dr. Mark Neff is the founding Director of the Center for Canine Health & Performance, a research initiative jointly supported by the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix and the Van Andel Research Institute of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dr. Neff received his PhD for cell cycle research in classical yeast genetics at the University of Virginia in the laboratory of Dr. Dan Burke. After graduate school, Dr. Neff accepted a Human Genome Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship from the U.S. DoE to work on the original Dog Genome Project with Dr. Jasper Rine, a member of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, at UC Berkeley. Dr. Neff's current research interests marry dual aspects of canine biology. The first aims to tackle the basis of inherited disorders in the dog, as these serve as natural models of human disease. The second aims to leverage adaptive variation in the dog to shed light on the evolution of form and function. The laboratory has a particular emphasis on using selectively bred action patterns, such as pointing and herding, to probe the mechanics of the mammalian mind. Both research aspects, health and performance, are driven by the unique strengths of breed genetics, and the ability to gain molecular access to causative genes through effective and efficient genome analyses.