Journal of Heredity Advance Access originally published online on July 29, 2008
Journal of Heredity 2008 99(5):518-527; doi:10.1093/jhered/esn057
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Canine Olfactory Receptor Gene Polymorphism and Its Relation to Odor Detection Performance by Sniffer Dogs
From the Institute of Genetics and Animal Breeding Polish Academy of Sciences, Jastrzebiec, Postepu 1, 05-552 Wolka Kosowska, Poland (Lesniak, Walczak, Jezierski, Sacharczuk, and Jaszczak); the Canine Department, Police Training Centre in Sulkowice, 05-560 Chynow, Poland (Gawkowski); and the Medical Research Center, Polish Academy of Sciences, Pawinskiego 5, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland (Lesniak)
Address correspondence to A. Lesniak at the addresses above, or e-mail: anna.lesniak{at}cmdik.pan.pl.
The outstanding sensitivity of the canine olfactory system has been acknowledged by using sniffer dogs in military and civilian service for detection of a variety of odors. It is hypothesized that the canine olfactory ability is determined by polymorphisms in olfactory receptor (OR) genes. We investigated 5 OR genes for polymorphic sites which might affect the olfactory ability of service dogs in different fields of specific substance detection. All investigated OR DNA sequences proved to have allelic variants, the majority of which lead to protein sequence alteration. Homozygous individuals at 2 gene loci significantly differed in their detection skills from other genotypes. This suggests a role of specific alleles in odor detection and a linkage between single-nucleotide polymorphism and odor recognition efficiency.
Corresponding Editor: Elaine Ostrander
Received October 29, 2007
Accepted April 17, 2008