THIS WEEK IN SCIENCE

摘要

The coats of domestic dogs show great variation-long, short, straight, wavy, curly, wiry, or smooth. To investigate how this variation arises, Cadieu et al. (p. 150, published online 27 August) performed genome-wide association studies on 80 different dog breeds. The coat phenotype could be dissected into three simple traits of length, curl, and growth pattern or texture with each trait controlled by one major gene, FGF5 (fibroblast growth factor-5), KRT71 (keratin-71), and RSP02 (R-spondin-2), respectively.