E-Mail Researchers at Uppsala University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences have used new methods for DNA sequencing and annotation to build a new, and more complete, dog reference genome. This tool will serve as the foundation for a new era of research, helping scientists to better understand the link between DNA and disease, in dogs and in their human friends. The research is presented in the journal Communications Biology. The dog has been aiding our understanding of the human genome since both genomes were released in the early 2000s. At that time, a comparison of both genomes, and two others, revealed that the human genome contained circa 20,000 genes, down from the around 100,000 predicted earlier. In the new study, researchers led by Dr Jennifer Meadows and Professor Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, have greatly improved the dog genome, identifying missing genes and highlighting regions of the genome that regulate when these genes are on or off.