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Dogs' Nose Hint towards Evolution

Rapid evolution occurs in dogs. Do you know, a dog’s nose speaks a lot about evolution? Hinting a route to evolution, simple genetic changes can produce clear new traits in dogs’ head shapes. Do your dog have a scrunched-up nose or a long snout, be it a boxer or a greyhound? Check it out. Study claims that their noses’ shapes depend on whether it inherits certain small stretches of repeating DNA sequences. Such easily achieved genetic changes can produce obvious new traits. These astounding findings hint this to be one way in which rapid evolution takes place.

A particular three-letter sequence of DNA bases within the coding regions of genes can be repeated many times. These repeats direct the production of long strings of the same amino acid within a protein. But when DNA is copied prior to cell division, the copying enzymes sometimes incorporate more or fewer of these repeats than they should. Such errors can alter the function of proteins in which they occur, and they can happen up to 100,000 times as often as single-base mutations.

Via: New Scientist

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