A small dog is a puppy until old age
US scientists find out how dogs age
Tatiana Matveeva, "Scientific Russia"
As part of the American Dog Aging Project, researchers are sequencing the genomes of 10 thousand dogs of different ages, sizes and breeds in order to more accurately determine the mechanisms of aging of four-legged friends, the press service of Princeton University reports. A detailed description of the project appeared in the journal Nature (Creevy et al., An open science study of aging in companion dogs).
For many years, it was believed that "dog years" are approximately equal to human years multiplied by seven: a one-year-old puppy is like a 7–year-old child, and an 11-year-old elderly dog is like a 77-year-old pensioner. But in fact, everything is much more complicated, experts say.
Large dogs tend to age the fastest – perhaps 10 times faster than humans – while small breeds can live up to 20 years, and "dog years" are about five times longer than human ones.
The new Dog Aging Project, launched in 2018, will allow you to get a complete picture of the aging of dogs. The collected database will provide veterinarians and scientists with tools to assess how the aging of a particular dog proceeds, and will lay the foundation for further studies of aging in dogs. The study includes DNA analysis of exceptionally long-lived dogs, the "super-long-livers" of the canine world.
How does it work? When a dog becomes a participant in the project, its owners agree to fill out annual surveys and take measurements from their dogs for the duration of the project, as well as provide biomaterial for DNA analysis.
At the moment, about 32 thousand dogs from all 50 US states have already joined the project. On the map above, one dot means five dogs. And the diagram shows the age distribution of current participants, stratified by size. The palest colors indicate the smallest dogs weighing less than 4.5 kilograms, and the darkest – the largest dogs weighing more than 40 kilograms.
The researchers hope to identify specific biomarkers of aging dogs. They expect their results to be comparable to the mechanisms of human aging for several reasons: dogs experience almost all the same functional disorders and diseases of aging as humans; the volume of veterinary care is largely similar to the volume of human health care; our dogs live in the same environment as us, which is the main factor of aging. which cannot be reproduced under any laboratory conditions.
"Given that dogs are in the same environment as humans and have a complex healthcare system, but much fewer people live, they offer a unique opportunity to identify genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors associated with a healthy life expectancy," notes Dr. Daniel Promislow.
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