Discovery Testing

Welcome to Discovery Testing

Be part of the discovery process! Your help is needed to identify the mutation responsible for the disorder in your breed.

A cornerstone of projectdog’s mission is to partner with breeders and owners to advance our mutual understanding of canine genetics and to benefit owners and breeders in the process.

Discovery Testing allows for:

• Direct support of research
• Free research account (access to immediate updates and discovery notices)
• Low cost preliminary testing. Only $25.00 donation per dog for the first 500 dogs tested
• Provides for preliminary report (classifies test result as High Confidence or Highly Informative)
• Aids breeders with interim breeding decisions.
• Free update to permanent report if actual causal mutation is identified.

How Discovery Testing Works:

Through extensive gene mapping and the leveraging of new technologies -Dr. Neff and his team have advanced several projects to a stage ideally suited for maximum breeder/owner involvement.

Using the projectdog platform for quick, accessible DNA testing will allow for narrowing down candidate genetic variants thus far identified to be associated with the breed disorder under study, with the aim to ultimately identify the lone mutation that is actually causal for the disorder.

In brief, currently several variants (mutations) are associated with the disorders. When dogs are tested by these multiple variants, dogs can be split into two classes – those that test consistently with all variants can be classified as affected, clear, or carriers, with high confidence, and a preliminary report will be issued to immediately assist breeders with breeding decisions.

A second class is comprised of dogs that test inconsistently across the range of mutations and are classified as ‘uniquely informative’ dogs from a research perspective. Identifying these dogs is optimal to researchers as breeder/owner interaction is of prime importance, and data from these exceptionally informative dogs will help to discern which of the multiple variants tested stay in contention for being singularly causal of the inherited disorder. If your dog falls into this category, the projectDOG team would like to work with you directly to test additional related dogs in your breeding program for no additional cost. Your dogs are key to identifying the causal mutation.

Because multiple mutations are being assessed, the cost of testing is three to four fold the cost of a standard individual DNA test. However, through Discovery Testing, you can have your dog preliminary tested for only a one time, $25.00 donation to projectDog for the first 500 dogs tested within your breed.

Your $25.00 donation will help subsidize the cost of researching multiple variants to ultimately identify the one causal mutation. The low cost donation reflects upon our mission, as a "science and service" for the breed community, as opposed to a commercial diagnostic laboratory. This approach is win-win, in that late but not final stage discoveries can still inform breeding decisions, and the results from this testing helps drive the research over the final hurdle.

A passcode specific to your breed project will be provided. All participants can submit their sample requests and view their reports online at https://projectdog.org.

Preliminary reports aid breeders in breeding decisions while ongoing research seeks to identify the actual causal mutation.

All preliminary report holders will automatically be upgraded to a permanent report, for no cost, if the causal mutation is identified and subsequent testing developed.

Use your breed passcode to learn more and to access the latest research update.