TUESDAY, April 12 (HealthDay News)

Scientists are rearranging the genetic information of certain dogs to make the coding human-like as a way to learn more about the genetic causes in people of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer that begins in the cells of the immune system.

Humans and dogs have a similar genetic makeup and share the same types of cancers, including lymphoma. In purebred dogs of the same breed, however, there are fewer genetic variations than in humans, making it simpler to locate areas of the canine chromosomes that may be involved with cancer.

In a new study, North Carolina State University researchers gathered genetic information from dogs with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and then rearranged, or recoded, the genomes of the dogs into human configuration.

The recoded dog genomes were then compared with the genomes of people with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma to identify chromosomes involved in the cancer in both humans and dogs.

"This is the first time that we were able to compare this information from dogs with lymphoma directly with existing data from human patients diagnosed with the equivalent cancer and using the same technique," lead author Rachael Thomas, a research assistant professor of molecular biomedical sciences at N.C. State, said in a university news release.

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