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We adopted a dog at the age of two. Our vet said it was a mix of an Australian Shepherd and Border Collie, which we've told everyone. Based on markings, I think it's likely. I am wondering, however, if there are any tests or other ways to know the mix of a dog if you don't know the specific parentage.

Does each dog breed have specific genetic markers that can be used to identify the breed? If so, has a dog breed test been developed or is there no commercial demand for such a test?

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There are many commercially available mixed breed ID tests, as a quick Google search will tell you. However, I cannot vouch for their accuracy: this news article may be of interest. Also this.

The genetic markers used to identify breeds in a mixed-breed are microsatellite markers (sometimes SNPs): you can read more here, but from the abstract:

We used molecular markers to study genetic relationships in a diverse collection of 85 domestic dog breeds. Differences among breeds accounted for ∼30% of genetic variation. Microsatellite genotypes were used to correctly assign 99% of individual dogs to breeds.

If you're interested in dog genetics, I encourage you to check out Elaine Ostrander's work. She's written at least one book for laypeople, in addition to her numerous journal publications.

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  • $\begingroup$ I'm not certain of the accuracy of these tests because dog breeds aren't commonly genotyped. I'm not certain if there is a central database of dog breed genotyping, or if there is, whether they have significant sample size to accurately assign a breed. $\endgroup$
    – user560
    Jun 10, 2013 at 22:55
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    $\begingroup$ @leonardo: The paper managed to separate breeds by genotyping only 5 unrelated dogs of each breed, but yes, I agree that the commercial tests are at a disadvantage because of the lack of a common repository (also they might be using SNPs instead of microsatellites) -- this is probably a significant source of the variation between tests. $\endgroup$
    – blep
    Jun 11, 2013 at 17:57
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    $\begingroup$ Another point that follows from the point made by @leonardo: if in the Parker et al paper, if breeds were separated on the basis of groups of microsatellites rather than microsatellites that were unique to each breed, you'd need a lot more markers to identify the heritage of a MBD with any reasonable certainty, so that you'd have clusters of linked markers (the idea being that each cluster was inherited from a single purebred dog). $\endgroup$
    – blep
    Jun 12, 2013 at 18:44

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