The global sequencing market reached $17.3 billion in 2024, with oncology accounting for more than one-third of applications.
The DNA Sequencing Market’s high growth rate is part of the broader adoption of the technology in personalized medicine and biotech research. The increase in genetic disorders, cancer and infectious diseases has also driven demand for sequencing technology. A study from Cornell University used improved DNA sequencing to uncover previously hidden genomic segments.
But genomic analysis has applications beyond biotech and healthcare.
A new study, led by researchers at the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, showed that most modern dogs carry small but detectable traces of post-domestication wolf ancestry.
The researchers examined more than 2,700 genomes from wolves, village dogs, breed dogs and other canids spanning the late Pleistocene (126,000 to 11,700 years ago) to the present. They used comparative genomic analysis to identify post-domestication wolf segments and estimate when they entered dog lineages.
The team found that nearly two-thirds of breed dogs carry some level of wolf ancestry, usually in small amounts that entered dog populations about 1,000 generations ago. All village dogs studied also showed detectable wolf ancestry.
Dogs diverged from an extinct population of gray wolves roughly 20,000 years ago. Earlier research on dog ancestry revealed that modern dogs carried little to no wolf DNA after domestication. The new analysis identifies small ancestral segments that have persisted across a wide range of breeds.
Some of the highest levels of wolf ancestry were found in Czechoslovakian and Saarloos wolfdogs, which were deliberately bred with wolves. Among traditional breeds, the Great Anglo-French tricolour hound had the highest level of wolf ancestry, at up to 5.7 percent. The Shiloh shepherd carried about 2.7 percent. Trace levels also appeared in small companion breeds, including chihuahuas.
The study found broad patterns across the data. Larger dogs and those bred for sledding, hunting or certain types of work tended to carry more wolf ancestry, while terriers and gundogs carried the least. Wolf-derived gene segments were also linked to specific adaptations, including olfactory genes in village dogs and a high-altitude tolerance gene found in Tibetan mastiffs.
The researchers compared common kennel club descriptors with levels of wolf ancestry and found that specific terms were more frequently associated with breeds of high or low wolf ancestry. The study did not determine whether wolf ancestry directly influences these traits.