Data from: The shepherds' tale: a genome-wide study across 9 dog breeds implicates two loci in the regulation of fructosamine serum concentration in Belgian shepherds

Diabetes mellitus is a serious health problem in both dogs and humans.
Certain dog breeds show high prevalence of the disease, whereas other
breeds are at low risk. Fructosamine and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) are
two major biomarkers of glycaemia where serum concentrations reflect
glucose turnover over the past few weeks to months. In this study, we
searched for genetic factors influencing variation in serum fructosamine
concentration in healthy dogs using data from nine dog breeds. Considering
all breeds together, we did not find any genome-wide significant
associations to fructosamine serum concentration. However, by performing
breed-specific analyses we revealed an association on CFA 3 (pcorrected ≈
1.68 × 10−6) in Belgian shepherd dogs. The associated region and its close
neighborhood harbours interesting candidate genes such as LETM1 and GAPDH
that are important in glucose metabolism and have previously been
implicated in the aetiology of diabetes mellitus. To further explore the
genetics of this breed specificity, we screened the genome for reduced
heterozygosity stretches private to the Belgian shepherd breed. This
revealed a region with reduced heterozygosity that shows a statistically
significant interaction (p = 0.025) with the association region on CFA3.
This region also harbours some interesting candidate genes and regulatory
regions but the exact mechanisms underlying the interaction are still
unknown. Nevertheless, this finding provides a plausible explanation for
breed-specific genetic effects for complex traits in dogs. Shepherd breeds
are at low risk of developing diabetes mellitus. The findings in Belgian
shepherds could be connected to a protective mechanism against the
disease. Further insight into the regulation of glucose metabolism could
improve diagnostic and therapeutic methods for diabetes mellitus.