Breeding & Epigenetics

As I was watching the Puppy Mill segment, the following quote from a certain balding VP caught my attention:"For dogs living life in a cage is not a bad thing. The dog is living in the cage content with all his needs met. This is the best way of doing this." Of course most of you probably disagreed anyway, but my nerdy self has a little science to add to that.

While everyone has probably heard of a genome, you may not have heard of a epigenome. Your genome is heredity information that's encoded in DNA (eye color, hair color, etc.). We also have an epigenome and so do our pets. An epigenome can change with the environment and can be passed from generation to generation. Scientists think it's probably associated with disease and if we can figure out the epigenome we can find better ways to treat diseases.

So that was a bit of a tangent, but the epigenome is also impacted by nurture. Puppies, kittens, babies develop portions of their genome as they are nurtured by their parents. Environmental conditions will also change the epigenome (famine, temperatures, etc.). Point being, Mr. Bald VP, puppies and kittens raised in the best environment possible will become the best pets possible because of changes in their epigenome. Animals forced to live in small cages, in all types of weather, who do not have positive human interaction and are standing inches about their smelly feces will not have the best puppies and kittens because their epigenomes will change negatively.