By Liat Clark, Wired UK
Ever wondered whether your feline hails from eastern Asia or the eastern Mediterranean? No need to rack your brain anymore – a geneticist has developed a cat ancestry test that will reveal your pet's lineage.
[partner id="wireduk" align="right"]Leslie Lyons, who heads up Lyons' Feline Genetics Laboratory at the University of California, promises that her cat genome test will uncover whether your pet's parents or grandparents belong to one of 29 "major fancy breeds". So you can finally say for certain if yours really is a pure Abyssinian, or hold off on the bragging if its mother in fact engaged in a relationship with the local alley cat.
Anyone wanting to take advantage of the £76 test just needs to order one online and send back a cheek swab sample using the cytological brushes (a cotton bud-pipe cleaner hybrid) supplied. Within ten to 15 days you will know whether you should be grooming or shunning your cat.
Lyons' lab isolates the DNA from the swab and tests for specific markers (single nucleotide polymorphisms), which it then uses to generate a profile. This is compared to a database of global cat profiles to see which race it shares the most variants with – the eight regions that mixed or "random bred" cats (the most common type) originate from are Western Europe, South Asia, Egypt, Eastern Mediterranean, Arabian Sea, Iran/Iraq, India and East Asia (most breeds hail from the first four locations). Lyons collected most of the cat samples for the database while attending cat shows hosted by the Cat Fanciers' Association (CFA), The International Cat Association (TICA) and others around the globe.
After determining its geographical origin the lab then goes deeper, comparing the DNA markers that determine what the cat looks like to 29 breeds (there are around 60, but the 29 are most common) to see if there are any similarities. Being US-based, the 29 common breeds chosen were derived from US "cat fancy registries" – the CFA and TICA. The heritage of cats outside of the US, therefore, will be more difficult to trace as breeding strategies and their history differ across the globe. Genetic mutations – or phenotypic traits – that dictate signifiers such as fur colour or length will further help narrow down the animal's origins, since families of breed share characteristics.
The resulting lineage profile, the lab says, is more than 90 per cent accurate.
"A true random bred cat will not match to specific breeds and low match probabilities will not be reported," the lab warns on its website. "If your cat is a true direct cross with a breed, having a true breed parent or grandparent, this test can detect this breed genetic contribution in your cat."
The Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, of which Lyons' lab is a part, also tests for parentage and genetic diseases in alpacas, elks and yaks – just in case your yak is wondering whether it has been adopted.
Source: Wired UK
Image: Andrea Westmoreland/Flickr