Special Adaptations
High Altitude Adaptation
The High Altitude Adaptation variant is associated with an adaptation to living at high altitudes. The variant is located in the EPAS1 gene.
More Info
Did you know?
Tibetans are thought to have acquired high altitude adaptation from Denisovans, an extinct archaic human species. Similarly, Tibetan highland dogs are thought to have acquired this adaptive variant from Tibetan Highland wolves. Genetic adaptations to high altitude have also been discovered in other animals such as the yak, alpaca, deer mouse, and Andean goose.
How it works
Dogs with one or two copies of the High Altitude Adaptation variant are likely to be better adapted to living at high altitudes.
Prevalence
1 in 420 dogs
has one or more copy of this genetic variant in our testing.
Technical Details
| Gene | EPAS1 |
|---|---|
| Variant | G>A |
| Chromosome | 10 |
| Coordinate | 48,626,862 |
All coordinates reference CanFam3.1
References & Credit
Credit to our scientific colleagues:
Gou, X., Wang, Z., Li, N., Qiu, F., Xu, Z., Yan, D., … Li, Y. (2014). Whole-genome sequencing of six dog breeds from continuous altitudes reveals adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia. Genome Research, 24(8), 1308–1315. View the article
von Holdt, B., Fan, Z., Ortega-Del Vecchyo, D., & Wayne, R. K. (2017). EPAS1 variants in high altitude Tibetan wolves were selectively introgressed into highland dogs. PeerJ, 2017(7), 1–17. View the article