A good dog with great genes: 1920s Alaska sled-relay hero Balto

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As diphtheria spread in an icebound Alaska town, antitoxin had to be delivered overland. Sled dogs were the only option. Balto and about 150 dogs travelled in a relay lasting 127 hours through temperatures of minus 45ºC.

WASHINGTON, DC, USA – In 1925, a handsome male sled dog named Balto led a 13-dog team that braved blizzard conditions during the grueling final 53-mile leg of a 674-mile dogsled relay, bringing lifesaving medicine to the Alaskan city of Nome during a diphtheria outbreak.

“Balto personifies the strength of the bond between human and dog, and what that bond is capable of,” said Katie Moon, a postdoctoral paleogenomics researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and co-lead author of the study published in the journal“Dogs not only offer comfort, support and friendship to humans, but many are actively bred or trained to provide vital services. That bond between human and dog remains strong, 100 years after Balto’s job was done,” Moon added.

Balto’s genome showed lower rates of inbreeding and a lower burden of rare and potentially damaging genetic variation than almost all modern breed dogs. Balto was found to share ancestry with modern Siberian huskies and Alaskan sled dogs as well as Greenland sled dogs, Vietnamese village dogs and Tibetan mastiffs, with no discernible wolf ancestry.

 

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