Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it!
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:05
Hello and welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host, Dr Judy Morgan. My guest today is someone who has a lot of brain cells that work really, really, really well because he's done some really smart things. And what we are going to talk about today is the epigenetic paw print understanding dog behavior and aging. And this is actually being done through DNA testing, and it's pretty cool. So my guest today is Dr Matteo Pellegrini. He's a bio physicist who has served on the UCLA Life Sciences Division faculty since he joined the Department of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology in 2005
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:46
He earned his Bachelor's in physics at Columbia University and his PhD in Physics at Stanford. See, I told you he's really smart. He has was a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA, where he worked on computational biology. His laboratory research centers on the development of novel computational approaches to analyze large scale genomic and epigenomic data. This is cool, like, how does your brain works in a totally different way than mine? Welcome to the show.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:21
So what? What got you started down this road?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
Yeah, my career has been kind of all over the place, but I started becoming interested in genetics and epigenetics when I became faculty at UCLA about 20 years ago, and it was the time when DNA sequencing became more rapid. So one of the rate limiting steps for doing this kind of research is the ability to gather DNA sequence data. And it used to be very expensive and time consuming, but over the past 20 years, there's been a real revolution. Right? The instrumentation we use to gather DNA sequence data has just become dramatically more efficient, just like many other types of technologies in our life. And so now it's become just very routine to collect DNA sequence data, and it's very inexpensive. And so that's opened up avenues of research, as well as direct to consumer testing, all these things.
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:22
It's very cool. So, and you know, the thing is, you collect all this data and then knowing how to interpret it and what it means, and I guess that's where you come in, and you've done a lot of research to figure all that out. Can you what is the difference between epigenetics and genetics? So genetics is our DNA. It's what we're made up of. But what is epigenetics, and how does that play in?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
Yeah, so basically, you know, every cell in our body has the DNA, same DNA sequence. It has essentially a blueprint for how to make the cells work. But obviously our cells are different, right? If you look at your cells in your skin or your cells in your blood or the cells in your brain, they're dramatically different, right? So how do we explain the fact that cells that have the same DNA within them have very different traits, very different shapes, very different properties? And that's where epigenetics comes in. So epigenetics, basically, is the science of understanding how the DNA is interpreted by different cells. And there are, you know, many molecular mechanisms that cells use to to interpret the DNA. A way to think about it is, imagine, you know, your DNA is an encyclopedia, right? So we have many, many words in our in our encyclopedia, but not everybody reads the same, you know, section of the encyclopedia, right? Some people may specialize in one type, and some people may specialize in other sections. And so our cells are the same way, right? And so some cells are reading certain parts of DNA, and other parts are reading others. And so epigenetics tells us, you know, which parts of the DNA are going to be read by different types of cells.
Dr. Judy Morgan 4:05
So cool. So one of the things that I did go to your website, which, by the way, is https://prosperk9.com/ for DNA testing kits. And we can talk about that some more. But one of the things that was talked about on there is, you use DNA methylation in some of your testing. What is that? And what are we looking at when we look at it?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
Yeah. So back to the you know, the notion that DNA is being read differently in every cells. One aspect of that is the DNA is actually directly modified.
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini 4:42
And so that we think of DNA as having, you know, four letters, A, C, G and T. But in fact, DNA has five letters because the C can be found in two different states, the C and the methyl C. So that's what DNA methylation refers to. Is the methylation of one of the bases, and this whether the base is methylated or not, gets back to whether the DNA is being read and genes are being produced at that particular location. So by knowing the pattern of DNA methylation, we can essentially get a profile of which genes are active in the cell and which genes are inactive. So it's telling us something about what type of cell that's going to be based on these DNA methylation patterns.
Dr. Judy Morgan 5:31
and what affects the methylation, like, what, what would make you see more or less of that?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
Yeah, so there's many factors that affect DNA methylation. So one is the type of cell. So for instance, a neural cell may be expressing certain genes that are only found in the brain, or a skin cell would be expressing genes that are found in the skin, like keratin or something like that. So every cell is expressing different genes, and this is reflected in the DNA methylation patterns. There's also differences in DNA methylation patterns between men and women. So for instance, we have sex chromosomes, women have 2x chromosomes, men have one. The methylation of those chromosomes is different between men and women, and so it's reflective of that. It's also reflective of age, and that's where my company is particularly interested in it. About 10 years ago, we discovered that the methylation patterns of DNA change as people get older, and so you can take these you can measure these methylation patterns and infer the age of an individual based on these patterns.
Dr. Judy Morgan 6:38
So if I sent a test, a DNA test, of my dog, into your company based on the amount of methylation, you'd be able to tell me, because I have one dog, he was found as a stray. So you would be able to give me an idea of the age of my dog?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
right? So what we've done is we've collected, you know, DNA samples from dogs of different ages, from puppies all the way to, you know, older dogs, 15, 16, years old. And we find that there are certain methylation sites that, you know, track these age ages very well. And so we use, you know, computational methods, you know, artificial intelligence type approaches to then take these patterns of DNA methylation, and essentially predict the age of the dog. And we can do that reasonably accurately. So we can typically predict the age of the dog within a year.
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini 7:29
And so it's the most accurate method available to date to measure the age of a dog. I mean, veterinarians look at teeth and and there's other, you know, sort of guesses, but they're not
Dr. Judy Morgan
the teeth method does not work very well for dogs. I will say
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
this is sort of a DNA, molecular based method that can give you that one year accuracy. And so far, it's the most accurate method out there for estimating the age of a dog. And of course, it it's not limited to dogs, you can use the same approach to estimate the age of a human or any other kind of animal that you have access to.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Oh, cool. So is this is your lab only doing testing on dogs? Or could the same information be used, for instance, for cats?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
absolutely, yeah. So we, in my lab at UCLA, we study many, many different animals. So we do humans, mice, dogs, we've done frogs, fish, all kinds of things. So we really span the kind of Noah's Ark type of research across animals. We have not yet done cats, but other labs have done cats. So there's, you know, we're not the only lab doing these things. So there are these big consortia that are applying these techniques to all kinds of species, including cats. So there are now even commercial tests available for cats, for estimating the age of cats, as well as dogs and other animals as well.
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:02
Very cool. And so what kind of sample does someone have to send in in order to get this? I mean, are we going to have to take our dog to the veterinarian and get a blood sample to send to you, or hair samples? How are we getting that DNA?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
No, usually we the simplest way is these buccal swabs. So you just take a little, you know, swab, like a Q tip, and you swab the inside of the dog's mouth, and it collects some of the cheek cells as well as some saliva cells, and then you ship that back in, and we can extract DNA from that. So that's a much easier way to collect.
Dr. Judy Morgan
That's cool. So, so there are other tests where we're testing for, like, allergies and things where we have to get, like, an aliquot full of saliva. But with this, we don't have to have, like a ton of saliva. It's really just getting some of those cells and a little bit of saliva on there.,
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
It's like a little swab that you rub the inside of your dog's mouth.
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini 10:00
For like, you know, 30 seconds. And usually that gives you enough material to be able to extract DNA and do these tests.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:08
That is so cool. So what are there other things that can be tested besides just, I mean, for, for instance, most of my dogs, I know, their age, but this one, I have no clue.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:22
So, so, are there other things that we can test, like, if I send in a sample, other than finding out how old is? Are there other things that we can test from this cheek sample?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
Yeah, so, so, well, obviously, there's two types of tests. There's the standard, you know, genetic tests that can tell you about the breed. They can tell you about whether the dog has genetic variants that predispose them to certain diseases. It can also tell you something about inbreeding, and all you know, and so there's many tests on the market that can provide this to consumers. On the epigenetic side, apart from the age, we also showed that there's associations between the DNA methylation and behaviors. So we collected, you know, behavioral data from dogs, and we showed that, you know, based on the methylation patterns, there's a strong correlation with with certain behaviors, like aggressive behaviors or how energetic the dog is. We've also seen that there are differences between dogs that are spayed or dogs that are intact. So there's you know effects from from those kind of surgical interventions. And you know, we're constantly looking for other types of you know effects. So in other species, there's been this, like, for instance, in humans, you can see effects from smoking, diet and things like that. So we don't have that kind of data in dogs yet, but you know, we think as as the research continues, we'll understand other environmental factors that can affect DNA methylation, and so you'll be able to read that out from these tests as well.
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:57
So that brings an interesting question to mind. So let's say if we're sending in and we're looking at the methylation for age, if that dog came from a household where there were a lot of environmental pollutants, smoke, whatever environmental pollutants would that increase the methylation and kind of muddy the waters for determining the age, you know, if they had a really poor diet or they lived in a really polluted environment, is would would that affect what you're going to use to Get an age on that dog?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
usually these signals are separate, or in science, we say they're orthogonal, so the effects on age are completely separate of the effect from like pollutants and things like that. So usually it doesn't affect the age estimates. So I'll just give you one example. Again. We don't have examples from dogs yet, but in humans, you know, there's one gene that is differentially methylated depending on whether you smoke or not. So, for instance, smokers will have certain methylation at these genes, and others non smokers will have so we hope to find other things like that in dogs. Another example is, we're working with the ASPCA. They obviously collect dogs that have been have had kind of traumatic early lives and have been stressed early in life, and so we're trying to collect samples from those dogs to compare it to dogs that have instead of been in nurturing environments, so we can find DNA methylation differences and see signatures of kind of stressful initial life stages. And there's, again, lots of scientific research that's been done to show that this kind of, you know, early stage of human up, not just human, any kind of animal nurturing, affects the epigenome as well. So it could be used potentially as an indication that, you know, some certain dogs have had difficult beginnings.
Dr. Judy Morgan 14:05
That is so cool, we need to take a break to hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back, and we're going to continue this discussion, which is fascinating. Stay tuned.
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Dr. Judy Morgan 15:33
Welcome back. You're listening to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host, Dr Judy Morgan and my guest today, Dr Pellegrini is explaining the epigenetic paw print, and this is just fascinating information. And for those of us who do a lot of rescue work with our animals, and so we don't know their background, being able to do a DNA test and be able to see changes in the genome that would indicate that they had a really traumatic beginning to their life or a really rough start. It just really fascinates me.
Dr. Judy Morgan 16:13
So I'm a one of my big things that I am a proponent of is fresh feeding for our pets, feeding them Whole Foods, real foods, not highly processed foods,
Dr. Judy Morgan 16:25
kind of the same that we talk about with people. If you really want to be healthy, you should be on a nice, fresh food diet and not always be eating Doritos and corn chips. So have do you know if any research has been done or anything to look at the effects of diet on the epigenome? You know, would that affect your methylation? I would think that some, like serious malnutrition, might have an effect. But would do you think there'd be a difference just in eating, you know, a wholesome diet versus a highly processed diet? Has that been looked at?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
Yes, exactly it has been looked at in people. Not so much in dogs yet, but in people, we do see that there's an epigenetic effect from your diet. And specifically, we did a study, you know, with people with what we would call healthy and unhealthy diets, and we saw there was a there was an epigenetic signature. And interestingly, you know, the factor that seemed to be strongly associated with the epigenome signature was like meat consumption or red meat consumption. So these kind of diets do seem to impact the epigenome. The other thing I want to say is, you know, the diets also have a dramatic impact on the microbiome, right? So, as you probably know, all the bacteria in our guts and in our mouth are strongly affected by by diet. And when we collect DNA from from the buccal swabs, or if we collect, you know, DNA from the stool, then we can also measure the microbiome as well. And in fact, that
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini 17:57
And in fact, that when we routinely collect DNA from the buccal swabs, we're also measuring the bacteria, and we find that the, you know, the bacteria in the mouth of the dog also change as they age. Puppies tend to have certain types of healthy bacteria, and then as dogs age, they tend to accumulate what we were referred to as unhealthy bacteria that are associated with like tooth decay and gingivitis. And so, you know, I think that the diet is probably going to have a very strong impact on on, you know, the type of bacteria we find in the dog's mouth as well as in the gut. But right now, we're focusing more on those.
Dr. Judy Morgan
That is so cool. I mean, we we talk about microbiome all the time. A lot of times we're just focused on the gut, but definitely, you know, in our lungs, on our skin, in our mouth. And I think that a lot of the dental disease that we see in our pets is just crazy, over the top, bad, and it's
Dr. Judt Morgan 18:56
one of those things that gets ignored way too often. So there's, there's some really great products on the market now for helping modulate that microbiome in the mouth, and it's pretty critically important. So it's very cool that you actually can see that on DNA testing as well.
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:14
So tell us more about Prosper K9. I went to the website and I saw that there are a few different test kits that are testing for different things. So can you tell us about some of those different tests and what you're looking at and what kind of information that that gives people? Because it looked really cool.
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
Yeah, there's essentially three types of tests that we provide. The first is what I would refer to as the more standard test, where we look at the DNA and we compare it to dogs of different breeds. So then we can infer, you know, the type of breed that your dog, or breed composition of your dog, and then we have a vast database of genetic variation that's associated with traits and disease. So we can.
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini 20:00
you know, see if your dog has certain genetic predispositions based on that. And lastly, you know, we look at inbreeding. You know, we know that inbreeding is a big issue with dogs, especially purebred dogs, and so we try to estimate how inbred the particular dog is based on their DNA. So that's one test. The other one is this oral microbiome test. So again, when we collect DNA from the mouth, some fraction of that DNA has come from the bacteria instead of the dog, and so we can analyze that, compare it to bacteria, and identify which bacteria are present in the mouth and at what relative abundance. And as I mentioned, there are clear trends in bacteria being associated with sort of tooth decay and gingivitis, and this happens to increase in older dogs compared to puppies. So we can report on the types of bacteria that are found in your particular sample. And the third is the DNA methylation test, which primarily informs on age, but as I as I mentioned, it can also say something about the likely behavioral tendencies of your dog, whether they might be more fearful and aggressive, or also whether they might be more energetic or sort of calmer dog.
Dr. Judy Morgan 21:20
This is so cool. You know, it would be really nice. Let's say I wanted to go to the shelter and adopt a dog. It would be so cool to run this test before I adopted the dog, and it would tell me what the behavioral traits are, so that I could say I can deal with that, or I could not deal with that. I've seen so many clients that they they go adopt a dog that seems, you know, sweet and wonderful, and they get them home and discover that they have just come home with something that wants to kill everyone or doesn't get along with anybody else. And it, unfortunately, can be very difficult.
Dr. Judy Morgan 21:59
So, when we see that this is probably not your wheelhouse, but so it, let's say I did that test and it said that my dog had fearful or aggressive tendencies based on the genome or the epigenetics.
Dr. Judy Morgan 22:17
Is that something that I mean? Is that helpful to me that I can then say, Okay, I'm going to have to be very careful with this, or I can do training to fix this.
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
Yeah, so one of the big differences between epigenetics and genetics, right? So genetics is fixed, right? You can't change your genetics, at least we don't have technology to do that, you know, effectively right now, but the epigenome instead changes, and that's why, you know, we can measure aging, but also, you know, it tells you something about behavioral tendencies, but that doesn't mean that they're fixed, right? Because it's epigenetics. You know, in a different environment, the dog's behavior, dog's temperament can change, right? If they go from a shelter to a loving home, I'm sure that the dog will behave differently over time. So it's basically giving you some insights into their likely predisposition, or the type of behaviors they they tended to have in the past. But of course, this is changeable, if you change their training and their environment. So you know, right now it's, you know, it gives you sort of a little bit of additional insight into your dog, and maybe changes a little bit your perspective on how to train and what kind of environment to create.
Dr. Judy Morgan
That could be so helpful. I think it can be helpful for for so many people, and, you know, it might keep a lot of dogs out of trouble.
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:40
You know by knowing a little bit of a little bit more about their past, it doesn't tell us everything about their past, but you know a little bit about what might have gone on and things to avoid, things to do. So It amazes me that we can do a cheek swab and then know how to deal with our dog's personality.
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini 24:02
Yeah, and hopefully, we're just at the beginning of this, you know, revolution. And you know, in the next decade, these type of tests will become much, much more informative and more accessible as well, right as the technology for gathering the data becomes less expensive and more accessible. Hopefully, you know, we'll have more tools to interact with our dog, we'll just know much more.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So cool. Now, I did see on the website there were a whole bunch of diseases listed. So when you're looking at that, at the genetic testing, are you able to tell people he's got the genes for this particular disease, or, you know, you should watch for this, or test for this. Does it?
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:44
Does it give us that disease information?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
Yeah, so there's, there are public databases, and also we can collect information from the scientific literature. So right now, we have a database of about 400 genetic variations that have been associated with.
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini 25:00
Traits and diseases. So if your dog has a particular variant that predisposes them to disease, that might be something you know for you to track. It doesn't mean they'll get the disease. It doesn't mean they have the trait. It just means they have a genetic predisposition for that. So certainly, you know, if you are positive for one of these disease variants, it's certainly good to, you know, chat with the veterinarian and check if there's ways to monitor and make sure they don't develop the disease.
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini 25:30
But it's, it's, you know, again, this is this type of information is also growing, but, but the current set of, you know, 400 is quite extensive already, so it can provide Most dogs will not have these variants, or will have very few, right? So, you know, typical dog may have, maybe from zero to one or two of these variants.
Dr. Judy Morgan 25:51
I would, I would think that could also be really helpful for breeders, to be able to say, look, I, you know, I tested the parents and they're negative for all these different traits. I would think that would be I did have one breeder in my practice who did genetic testing on her dogs that she was breeding, and it was really cool that she could bring in a report that says, Look, we're negative for all these things. And I would think if you're going out to purchase a dog, that would be great information. But even if you adopt a dog and you don't know anything about their history or even what their breed is, so you don't know what they might be predisposed to, you know, based on breeding, this could be really cool information that could be useful for both, you know, the owner and the veterinarian, to have that information of what, what to watch for.
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini 26:43
Yeah, more and more are using this, this kind of data, yeah,
Dr. Judy Morgan
it makes perfect sense for them to do that. we are out of time. This is so cool. I love what you are doing. And I think it's so cool that a physics major is now doing all this epigenetic and genetic research. That's very cool.
OFFER 27:03
So we have a 10% discount on ProsperK9 products if you use the code DRJUDY, and I believe your website is https://prosperk9.com/ And that's K9 it'll be in the show notes. Everybody. Check it out. I think it's really cool. It's an easy test to do from home. You don't have to go anywhere. You order the test in the mail, get your cheek swab, put it back in the mail. How long does it usually take to get the results?
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
Usually four to six weeks.
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:31
Very cool. All right, great information. I think I'm going to send some in on some of my kids, because stuff I'd like to know. Thank you very much for your time today, and thank you for the great work that you're doing for our pets.
Dr. Matteo Pellegrini
You're welcome.
Outro
Thanks for listening to another great Naturally Healthy Pets episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for some helpful links. And if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. We value your feedback and we'd love to hear from you on how we're doing. Visit DrJudyMorgan.com for healthy product recommendations, comprehensive courses, upcoming events and other fantastic resources. Until next time, keep giving your pet the vibrant life they deserve.
DISCLAIMER
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Judy and her guests express their own views, experience and conclusions. Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.