Boxer Rebellion at the Los Angeles Times

Tasha the Boxer featured in a LA Times story on canine DNA:

Scientists have decoded the complete genome of the domestic dog, a milestone announced Wednesday that provides a biological roadmap for unraveling human diseases and probing the mysterious bond between man and his best friend. Dozens of researchers worked for two years deciphering and analyzing the 19,300 genes belonging to a 12-year-old boxer named Tasha. What they found was an exceptional correlation between the DNA of Canis familiaris and Homo sapiens, according to a study published today in the journal Nature.

"Humans and dogs have essentially the same genes," said lead author Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, co-director of the genome sequencing and analysis program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. "Every gene has a gene with the same function in the other genome." That closeness is reflected in the numerous diseases shared by dogs and humans, including cancer, heart disease, blindness, epilepsy and diabetes.