The genetic architecture of dog ownership: large-scale genome-wide association study in 97,552 European-ancestry individuals.

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Gong T, Karlsson R, Yao S, Magnusson PKE, Ajnakina O, Steptoe A, Bhatta L, Brumpton B, Kumar A, Mélen E, 23andMe research team , Lin KH, Tian C, Fall T, Almqvist C

G3 (Bethesda) 14 (8) - [2024-08-07; online 2024-05-31]

Dog ownership has been associated with several complex traits, and there is evidence of genetic influence. We performed a genome-wide association study of dog ownership through a meta-analysis of 31,566 Swedish twins in 5 discovery cohorts and an additional 65,986 European-ancestry individuals in 3 replication cohorts from Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Association tests with >7.4 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms were meta-analyzed using a fixed effect model after controlling for population structure and relatedness. We identified 2 suggestive loci using discovery cohorts, which did not reach genome-wide significance after meta-analysis with replication cohorts. Single-nucleotide polymorphism-based heritability of dog ownership using linkage disequilibrium score regression was estimated at 0.123 (CI 0.038-0.207) using the discovery cohorts and 0.018 (CI -0.002 to 0.039) when adding in replication cohorts. Negative genetic correlation with complex traits including type 2 diabetes, depression, neuroticism, and asthma was only found using discovery summary data. Furthermore, we did not identify any genes/gene-sets reaching even a suggestive level of significance. This genome-wide association study does not, by itself, provide clear evidence on common genetic variants that influence dog ownership among European-ancestry individuals.

NGI SNP genotyping [Service]

NGI Uppsala (SNP&SEQ Technology Platform) [Service]

National Genomics Infrastructure [Service]

PubMed 38820132

DOI 10.1093/g3journal/jkae116

Crossref 10.1093/g3journal/jkae116

pmc: PMC11304603
pii: 7686067