Dog Coat

You can't judge a book by its cover. But you can judge a dog by its coat. You can even read right through to its genes. Because a study in the August 27th online issue of Science shows that just three key genes govern the length and texture of dog fur.Domestic dogs come in a stunning variety of shapes and sizes, and [different:few] breeds wear different coats. They can have short hair or long hair, or fur that's straight, wavy, curly, wiry or smooth. To find the genes [responsible:suitable] for this furry rainbow, scientists scanned the DNA of a [thousand:variety] individual dogs from 80 different breeds. And they found that every coat's appearance boils down to three simple traits: length, curl and texture. And that each of these traits is controlled by just one gene.So, a long-haired Golden retriever has one variant of a gene called FGF5, whereas a short-haired lab has another. By mixing and [matching:showing] variants of these three genes, you get [everything:nothing] from a curly-haired poodle to a wire-haired Scottie with bushy eyebrows and a droopy moustache. Which is probably more than you'll ever need to know about the hair of the dog that bit you.