I Tried the Most Popular Dog DNA Tests to Find the Best One

Monday, August 12, 2019

Dr. Kari Ekenstedt was in this month’s issue of Good Housekeeping talking about DNA tests for dogs!

When the samples arrive at the lab, technicians manually extract and process the DNA on the cheek swab to those in their database. A computer algorithm then creates a chart of how much of each breed your dog’s DNA matches. The process is complex, but Kari Ekenstedt, D.V.M., Ph.D., an assistant professor and canine genetics specialist at Purdue University did her best to explain.

Take a Labrador, for example. “Basically, the test flags little windows of information along the dog chromosomes and compares your dog to the known Labradors and every other breed that’s in the dataset,” Ekenstedt says. “The testing companies need to make sure that their reference database captures all of that variability representing purebred Labrador. ”

Writer(s): Purdue Veterinary Medicine News | pvmnews@purdue.edu