TNS Again

[Journey]

I am not sure how much to believe since I got the information second hand. There apparently is an ISDS registered bitch that has come back testing positive for carrying the TNS+haplo gene. If it's true then this opens a can of worms. Since I will admit this is over my head - anyone want to contact Alan Wilton who's doing the research and testing? a.wilton@unsw.edu.au

 

Karen

[Katelynn & Gang]

I'll email!

 

Katelynn

[Eileen Stein]

Even if it's true, I don't think it opens much of a can of worms, for reasons I explained in my last post in the other TNS thread. But at this point we don't even know if it's true, or if it is, whether she is ISDS in name only (i.e., dual registered, but breeding and having offspring only within the KC.

[Journey]

Even if it's true, I don't think it opens much of a can of worms, for reasons I explained in my last post in the other TNS thread. But at this point we don't even know if it's true, or if it is, whether she is ISDS in name only (i.e., dual registered, but breeding and having offspring only within the KC.

 

 

I am not sure how registration works in The Netherlands. I ran her pedigree at Annadune and there are several dogs that I can't find info on. One - L'Blue (sp??) has nothing behind him and he's not that far back in the pedigree. As for her being ISDS in name only, yes, I would have to say from what I saw she is, but that doesn't negate the fact she is ISDS. I'll have to go reread your other post.

 

Thanks for moving this thread for me.

 

Karen

[Katelynn & Gang]

http://www.bordercollies.nl/stamgail.shtml?lang=e

 

I wouldn't say she is working bred from looking at her pedigree and dogs related.

 

Katelynn

[quicksilver]

Anadune isn't that useful (IMO) for anything other than show lines. I've checked the bitch on the Border Collie Database - http://db.kennel.dk/bcdb/dogs.php?- and the sire is ISDS working lines as far as I can tell from the 2nd generation backwards.

 

The dam, yep there's the mysterious L'Bleu in the 3rd generation, but apart from that every dog goes straight back to ISDS dogs, by the 9th generation at the latest. (told you the BCDB was better than Anadune lol). And not a sign of an AU or NZ show champion anywhere. Though some of the letters are certainly a mystery!

 

Also, if you look at the pedigree, it's no more inbred than any normal ISDS working pedigree. With one exception - the dam's mother. Her grandsire is the same on the sire's and the dam's side - but that isn't that unusual in the working lines, though perhaps more so in recent times.

 

Even if you were tempted to point the finger at the mystery dog on the dam's side, you can't escape the autonomal recessive inheritance of TNS. So unfortunately (I hate this as much as the rest of you) this does firmly suggest that TNS is in the ISDS lines.

 

There is one thing that I find peculiar, though. It was my understanding that the genetic test for TNS could only be done for dogs related to the AU/NZ dogs where the gene has been identified. That's not the case with this bitch.

[Katelynn & Gang]

There is one thing that I find peculiar, though. It was my understanding that the genetic test for TNS could only be done for dogs related to the AU/NZ dogs where the gene has been identified. That's not the case with this bitch.

 

They were not sure that the TNS could be detecable in ISDS dogs with their current test. They ran a sample of the ISDS dog and found that the TNS looks the same as in the AU Show dogs and the AU working dog (they found TNS in a working bred AU dog with no relation to the AU Show dogs).

 

Now they are wondering how many other collie breeds also carry it because the above suggests that TNS is a very old mutation.

 

Though, I still wouldn't write the ISDS dog off as being "purely" ISDS bred. When the test becomes public, we'll see what happens.

 

Katelynn

[Eileen Stein]

I did figure out the name of the bitch in question, and looked her up on the http://db.kennel.dk/bcdb/dogs.php database. One of her dam's grandsires is listed as "L'Blue," but apparently nothing is known about his parentage. I also looked up "L'Bleu" (since that's the spelling used on the database Katelynn posted) on that database, and found no entry. I looked on Teun van den Dool's list of all the names of ISDS registered dogs, and there is no "L'Blue" or "L'Bleu" listed. On the database Katelynn posted (where the bitch's show placements are chronicled), her great-grandsire "L'Bleu" is listed with an "ALSH" (whatever that is) number rather than an ISDS number; ditto for "L'Blue" on the first database. So what reason have we for thinking that "L'Bleu/L'Blue" or his forebears are ISDS dogs? All the evidence available suggests that he was not.

 

The dam, yep there's the mysterious L'Bleu in the 3rd generation, but apart from that every dog goes straight back to ISDS dogs, by the 9th generation at the latest.

 

Yes, but that "apart from" is crucial. If the bitch in question does in fact carry the TNS allele, then there's no reason to think that more than one of her forebears in every generation carried it. If it came through "L'Bleu" (about which we apparently know nothing more than his un-ISDS-sounding name), and L'Bleu's forebears were non-ISDS, then it came from outside the ISDS and goes back no further than him within the ISDS. If the ISDS registration of L'Bleu's direct descendants was pro forma, and he in fact did not produce offspring that entered the ISDS gene pool that any of us would be drawing on, then the fact that one or more of his offspring might have an ISDS registration number is as a practical matter of no significance.

 

Let me give an example. Without naming names, there was a dog with Australian show ancestry on the topside of his pedigree (let's call him X) who was at some time in the past registered with the ABCA, because he had been accepted for registration by one of the sloppier US working registries, and at that time the ABCA was honoring all the registrations of that other US registry. A littermate of X, who was not registered with the ABCA, was later found to be a CL carrier. X was never tested, so he might or might not have been a carrier. X had about 14 offspring who were registered with the ABCA. But only 1 of that 14 had any offspring registered with the ABCA, and none of those offspring had any offspring who were registered with the ABCA. Why not? Presumably because the focus of the breeding in that line was on KC activities rather than on work, and so within two generations the owners of the pups were not bothering to register with the ABCA. So based on that one registration, it's possible that "CL was in the ABCA lines," but not in any way that had any significance for us (and not for long).

 

I just can't get that excited about this, at least not on the facts that we know now.

[laurie etc]

I did figure out the name of the bitch in question, and looked her up on the http://db.kennel.dk/bcdb/dogs.php database. One of her dam's grandsires is listed as "L'Blue," but apparently nothing is known about his parentage. I also looked up "L'Bleu" (since that's the spelling used on the database Katelynn posted) on that database, and found no entry. I looked on Teun van den Dool's list of all the names of ISDS registered dogs, and there is no "L'Blue" or "L'Bleu" listed. On the database Katelynn posted (where the bitch's show placements are chronicled), her great-grandsire "L'Bleu" is listed with an "ALSH" (whatever that is) number rather than an ISDS number; ditto for "L'Blue" on the first database. So what reason have we for thinking that "L'Bleu/L'Blue" or his forebears are ISDS dogs? All the evidence available suggests that he was not.

 

OK - so once upon a time I took in a "rescue" from Belgium, a blue merle bitch that had been imported to show in conformation, but from "working lines" and registered with ISDS. She went back to the mysterious Blue, (her kennel name prefix is Maeglin, but that kennel used to be Mancunian). By the way, she is a nice worker, not at all "Barbie-ish". I placed her because she was a bit evil and really had it out for my other bitch, Pod. Here's the web page about "Blue, or "LBleu" or whatever - I think the confuson comes because the owner is Belgian, and isn't French spoken there? Anyways, click on this link, and then go to "kennel" and then to "how it went on" - you'll find the story of "Blue". Laurie

http://www.maeglin.be/bordercollie/english...dercollies.html

 

edited to say - I don't have her registration papers any longer. Go to thinking about this, and thought I should clarify. The bitch I had came from the same kennel, but looking at the website she was not "L'blue" progeny - even thought she was blue merle. Her merle came from another blue merle ISDS line that the breeder has.

[quicksilver]

If the bitch in question does in fact carry the TNS allele, then there's no reason to think that more than one of her forebears in every generation carried it. If it came through "L'Bleu" (about which we apparently know nothing more than his un-ISDS-sounding name), and L'Bleu's forebears were non-ISDS, then it came from outside the ISDS and goes back no further than him within the ISDS. If the ISDS registration of L'Bleu's direct descendants was pro forma, and he in fact did not produce offspring that entered the ISDS gene pool that any of us would be drawing on, then the fact that one or more of his offspring might have an ISDS registration number is as a practical matter of no significance.

 

You need to remember that TNS is autonomal recessive (I had no idea what that meant until TNS was discussed on the Canine Forum back in the UK!). That means that both the bitch's dam AND sire must be carriers in order for the bitch to have the gene (I think that's right!). So however much the finger is pointed at L'Bleu/Blue/whatever (without any evidence for doing so other than that the dog is unknown), one cannot escape the fact that the bitch's sire is also a carrier. And his ancestry is pure ISDS - I've looked up the 10-generation pedigree on the BCDB and the lines are good working lines.

 

And there's no inbreeding apart from the little bit I mentioned before on the dam's side - and even IF that was enough to fi the TNS gene on the dam's side, again we can't escape the fact that the sire must also be a carrier.

 

It's a bummer - truly - I have no respect whatsoever for most of the NZ show lines, and it's all too tempting (I've done it myself) to point the finger of blame elsewhere. This latest result, if correct, suggests it may not just be a show lines issue after all. Unless, of course, there's some mistake with the genetic marker they're using (clutches at straws lol).

 

EDIT: Hmm since writing the above a few minutes ago, I've been trying to remember how genes are inherited to carriers - since the bitch is presumably a carrier, not affected. I know it's inherited like CEA - anyone care to refresh my memory?

[Liz P]

EDIT: Hmm since writing the above a few minutes ago, I've been trying to remember how genes are inherited to carriers - since the bitch is presumably a carrier, not affected. I know it's inherited like CEA - anyone care to refresh my memory?

 

If the bitch is a carrier she has ONE copy of the gene so got it from ONE parent. If she was affected she would need TWO copies so BOTH her parents would have been carriers. Since she is a carrier she only needs a single ancestor to have passed it down to her.

[quicksilver]

Thanks for sorting out my muddied thinking - that does put a different perspective on things!

[Eileen Stein]

You need to remember that TNS is autonomal recessive (I had no idea what that meant until TNS was discussed on the Canine Forum back in the UK!). That means that both the bitch's dam AND sire must be carriers in order for the bitch to have the gene (I think that's right!).

 

No, the dam and sire would both have to be carriers for the bitch to be afflicted (i.e., have two copies of the gene). But she isn't -- she is supposedly a carrier. That means, if true, that she necessarily would have only one copy of the gene. It came either through her sire or her dam, but not both.

 

And there's no inbreeding apart from the little bit I mentioned before on the dam's side

 

The point about inbreeding concentrating deleterious recessive alleles is that they become more likely to meet up with the same allele from a mate, because there is more homozygosity in an inbred population -- i.e., less variation in the alleles at a given gene locus, so fewer possible innocent combinations. Therefore, these harmful recessives meet and combine to cause the disease itself. But in this case no disease HAS been caused in this bitch's non-inbred line (as far as we know, certainly). At most she's just a carrier -- one recessive allele has been making its way harmlessly down the generations. We all have 'em. Our dogs have 'em. If it weren't this one, it would be another. But in an inbred population, they are much more likely to meet up. Think of it this way -- suppose you had two specific molecules in a thimbleful of liquid. They would be much more likely to meet up than if you had two such molecules in Lake Superior. Your odds of disease resulting are just much worse in an inbred population, and that's why we're seeing these recessive diseases in show populations. Even if this bitch is a carrier, and even if she were a genuine ISDS working dog, we haven't seen this DISEASE yet in a working population.

 

Unless, of course, there's some mistake with the genetic marker they're using (clutches at straws lol).

 

It's not clutching at straws, actually. As I understand it, this test is just a linkage test -- i.e., a test for an area of chromosome close to the mutation, not for the mutation itself. It's not like the DNA test for CEA, which is a test for the actual mutation. The conclusion that a dog is a TNS carrier is based on an assumption that it's probable the area they can test for will stay linked to the mutation when the DNA recombines to produce the next generation, because it's only the area they can identify, not the gene itself. And it's by no means certain that that particular segment of the DNA will stay intact during crossover. There have been a number of cases to date where linkage tests have been proven inaccurate when a test for the actual mutation has been developed and applied. So from the sound of it, this is not really a test that's ready for prime time, so to speak.

 

Even if it should prove to be an accurate test for the allele, however, I still would not be terribly concerned, for the reasons I've stated in my last post here and in the other TNS thread. Let me quote from something Denise Wall posted in an earlier thread about CL, which is another autosomal recessive disease -- I think she makes an important point more clearly than I have managed to:

 

If we were to have tests for all the deleterious mutations like we now have a test for CL, at least a few carriers would be likely be found for many of them in the border collie population. At what point do we decide our dogs need to be tested for any particular mutation? For me, it would depend on the degree of inbreeding I was doing and the lines I was using. Simply avoiding inbreeding markedly improves your odds of not having some weirdo mutation produce affected individuals as has happened with the CL mutation.

 

In the future, as more of these mutations are found and tests developed, people will need to become more sophisticated in their understanding of the numbers of these mutations and the odds of their dogs having them. Right now, people over-react to ones they know about, not realizing they are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

 

At this point, with the stats we've seen, I, personally, see no reason to test the general working border collie population for CL. Maybe if you somehow had breeding from the known carriers, but not in general. I'm sure there are a few with the mutation out there, just as there are a few or more with other worse mutations. Just because we know about this one doesn't make it more important than the ones we don't know about. The best general defense is reasonable breeding strategies.

[Katelynn & Gang]

Well I know why we cannot find anything on L'Blue.

 

"The A.L.S.H. (Annexe au Livre des Origines Saint-Hubert) is an annex Stud Book, in which dogs are registered whose parents are known (thus at least the first generation), or dogs from recently created breeds, or dogs from not-allowed cross-breedings. When four generations of the ancestors are known, the dogs are transcribed automatically to the L.O.S.H. register."

 

From: http://www.belgiandogs.org/CynologyPollet.htm

 

Katelynn

[Arnpriors]

For your information - Richard Bridgeman (Chairman of the Pastoral Breeds Health Foundation, PBHF) has received the following communication from Alan Wilton -

 

Progress. Have set up a scholarship for Jeremy Shearman and much of the funds from PBHF are going to that. He is working his way through the very large gene looking for the mutation.

We have determined that we can detect TNS carriers in purely English lines. Gail Fan's Rispinge had a TNS litter and has an identical TNS chromosome to the Aust/NZ lines and Aust Working Dog lines with TNS. (The sire of the litter was from Aust/NZ lines). We have started detecting the TNS chromosome in ISDS and European lines which do not have any Aust/NZ ancestry.

 

 

Alan Wilton

 

School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences

 

University of New south Wales

 

NSW 2052

 

Thank You

Maggie

[Pearse]

For your information - Richard Bridgeman (Chairman of the Pastoral Breeds Health Foundation, PBHF) has received the following communication from Alan Wilton -

 

Progress. Have set up a scholarship for Jeremy Shearman and much of the funds from PBHF are going to that. He is working his way through the very large gene looking for the mutation.

We have determined that we can detect TNS carriers in purely English lines. Gail Fan's Rispinge had a TNS litter and has an identical TNS chromosome to the Aust/NZ lines and Aust Working Dog lines with TNS. (The sire of the litter was from Aust/NZ lines). We have started detecting the TNS chromosome in ISDS and European lines which do not have any Aust/NZ ancestry.

 

 

This is interesting and may or may not be significant. First, they haven't found the disease in any non-Aus/NZ lines.

 

Second, they haven't found the mutation that causes TNS yet so they have not identified that in non-Aus/NZ lines.

 

What they have found are markers on the chromosome that they believe contains the gene, that they believe contains the mutation that causes TNS. The chromosome could predate the mutation.

 

Let's say, that there are two types of chromosome 19 in Border Collies, each has markers (M) along it's length at different intervals. It would look like this:

 

 

Chr19.1 --------M----M----------------M----------M------------------M

 

Chr19.2 M------------------M------M---------M-------------M----------

 

If you had gone out and sampled the entire population of Border Collies way back, you may have seen both types of chromosome but no mutation for TNS. At some point in the past, a gene on the second chromosome acquires the mutation for TNS:

 

Chr19.2 M----------X-------M------M---------M-------------M----------

 

Now you have a subset of Border Collies that have the type 2 chromosome AND the mutation for TNS. Was the TNS mutation ever in non-Aus/NZ show lines? It will depend on when the mutation arose (how far back). Is the mutation in working lines? I don't know. It depends on whether it ever was there to start with, and whether or not it has been bred out of working lines.

 

This new information for Dr. Wilton's group speaks to the first option (the two chromosomal types) but at this point tells us nothing about the presence (or prevalence) of the mutation outside show lines. It doesn't mean it isn't there, but it provides no evidence that it is either. It's good to see that they were able to scrape together funding to keep his grad student working on this.

 

Pearse

[Rosanne]

For your information - Richard Bridgeman (Chairman of the Pastoral Breeds Health Foundation, PBHF) has received the following communication from Alan Wilton -

 

Progress. Have set up a scholarship for Jeremy Shearman and much of the funds from PBHF are going to that. He is working his way through the very large gene looking for the mutation.

We have determined that we can detect TNS carriers in purely English lines. Gail Fan's Rispinge had a TNS litter and has an identical TNS chromosome to the Aust/NZ lines and Aust Working Dog lines with TNS. (The sire of the litter was from Aust/NZ lines). We have started detecting the TNS chromosome in ISDS and European lines which do not have any Aust/NZ ancestry.

 

Maggie

 

 

Will the pedigrees be posted?

 

I am not one to deny anything is possible, but I'm curious, since I would certainly consider it possible for a vet who is not actually involved in the breed to not know whether a dog is completely from 'working' or 'English' lines or not. Perhaps the last 2 generations are working or English (not sure what that means, most dogs I've heard called "English" were show lines), but if there are show dogs behind them, they could go back to OZ dogs....

 

That L'Blue dog still intrigues me - did anyone ever find out the pedigree on that one? If he was working lines, as the owner's website claimed, isn't that carrier then from all ISDS lines? I'm not at all suggesting this is a prominent problem in ISDS or ABCA dogs, but only that if this begins to be shown in working lines it might become prudent to start some testing. Something like this, like CEA, once parents are found Normal there's no reason to keep spending money testing puppies - in several generations the need for testing might become obsolete in working circles, since it's almost a certainty that it's rarer there than in show dogs.

[Journey]

Will the pedigrees be posted?

 

 

That L'Blue dog still intrigues me - did anyone ever find out the pedigree on that one?

 

The pedigree is posted at www.bordercolliehealth.com You have to go to the Netherland location, then you can see the dog in question.

 

As for L'Bleu - there is no pedigree for him. I am beginning to think that Gail's pedigree number (has a G1) preceding the number means 1st generation. Since L'Bleu was not in the books as a Border Collie, 4 generations have to be recorded in order for the offspring to be registered. Katelynn posted about this in this thread - "When four generations of the ancestors are known, the dogs are transcribed automatically to the L.O.S.H. register."

 

Karen

[bcs4eva]

I Googled Mancunian Pepper which led me to this site:

http://home.scarlet.be/eddy.vogels/

 

It would seem his sire "Blue" is the dog "Stamvader Blue" on the same site, which translates to "Godfather Blue". The English translation of this site states

 

"In 1987, BLUE came to Belgium : he was of very good breeding, and of working parents, but his litter had not been registered, so he was what is known in Belgium as "breedless of unknown breeding". Nevertheless, BLUE was a very beautiful dog, with an enormous potential for working animals : at four months old, he worked the neighbours 200 cows into a corner of the field ! But I was not yet convinced that working sheep was something for us average Europeans,

so BLUE was trained to be an agility dog.

After 2 official shows (2x excellent !), BLUE was registered as Border Collie by St. Hubertus, the Belgian Kennel Club. Hip-score A (excellent), eye-tests negative, and nothing stood in the way of BLUE's stud-dog career.

And what a stud-dog !

BLUE improved each bitch that he was put to! "

 

The site includes an email address for the owner.

[Katelynn & Gang]

I have corresponded with Blue's owner. There is and never will be any pedigree on Blue. He was bought in Wales from unknown breeding and because of this, anything they say about Gail being all "English" lines is not true because they do not know all of her breeding and no one ever will!

 

They'll have to find another dog from "ISDS" working lines to say they have indeed found it to be in a all ISDS working bred bloodline.

 

I, for one, would be willing to send in blood from my bitch (or all my dogs for that matter) for them to test because as far as working lines go, she is related to Gail (well for the most part besides the lines that lead back to a conformation kennel, Wildfell).

 

Katelynn

[bcs4eva]

Does anyone have any more of the missing portion of the last pedigree on this page?

http://bordercolliehealth.com/TNSLitterPedigrees.html

[Katelynn & Gang]

The part of the pedigree that is missing is Blue's pedigree. Here is what I wrote in my last post.

 

I have corresponded with Blue's owner. There is and never will be any pedigree on Blue. He was bought in Wales from unknown breeding and because of this, anything they say about Gail being all "English" lines is not true because they do not know all of her breeding and no one ever will!

 

They'll have to find another dog from "ISDS" working lines to say they have indeed found it to be in a all ISDS working bred bloodline.

 

I, for one, would be willing to send in blood from my bitch (or all my dogs for that matter) for them to test because as far as working lines go, she is related to Gail (well for the most part besides the lines that lead back to a conformation kennel, Wildfell).

 

There is a huge hole in Gail's pedigree that will never be filled. There is no possible way to fully say that Gail is from full English lines without question and doubt because of this huge hole.

 

Katelynn

[bcs4eva]

I may be getting confused here. When you refer to Gail do you mean Gael ISDS 176596 or Gail Fan'e Rispinge?

[Katelynn & Gang]

I may be getting confused here. When you refer to Gail do you mean Gael ISDS 176596 or Gail Fan'e Rispinge?

 

Gail Fan'e Rispinge which would be her kennel club name (AKA show name) and "Gail" would be her call name which show people could call her "working" name.

 

Katelynn

[bcs4eva]

Ok thanks - that is who I thought you were referring to. I was referring to the pedigree underneath hers, with Meg Merrilees as the dam. I'm looking for the pedigree of Gael ISDS 176596.