thefiresidecat
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It is just hard for me to believe that Basepaws can seriously present themselves as a feline genetic testing company and charge money for their product, if they still cannot even determine from your cat's DNA if it is a longhaired or shorthaired cat. I have personally been testing my cats for the longhair gene through UC Davis since 2010, and they have been offering the test longer than that... the results are reliable and it takes them no more than 1-2 days to do the test after they receive my cats' swabs in the mail... this is a basic, well understood genetic test that is offered by labs all over the world.
If you crossed a Somali with an American Shorthair, you would get a short haired, ticked tabby cat.
lol well that's not it then. hehe not all of what I've seen of somalis are ticked. there is a smoke version that is accepted in some cat associations I've been reading about.
That's interesting. I wonder what they'll come up with for my red tabby... How long did it take you to get the results,
I've had my own DNA analysed by 23andme about 15 years ago. What I like about this service is that they keep coming up with new stuff as the database keep growing. They also change some estimates based on new data, which is fine and interesting to watch. I also like that my sample is used to promote scientific research in the field.
Basepaws has a similar model. They're a smaller company so I really hope we'll still hear from them in 15 years but if that will be the case and more people send in their cat DNA then I'm sure they will get more accurate.
More importantly, they'll start providing health information about cats, which is what I was hoping to get to begin with. Of course, my Gingi probably won't be with us by then (he's 16 now) but hopefully other cats will benefit from the information gathered. And humans too. That's what I liked the most about them, really. I believe they work with UCLA - looks like their people are working in the lab there - and the data is used for general research in the field of genetics too.
Anyway, those were the reasons that compelled me to send in my cat's sample. He's a red tabby DSH, I couldn't care less about his ancestry
basepaws has some work to do. I hope they do finally get their act together. but right now it's mostly an expensive parlour game. (at least that's the feeling I get, maybe I'm wrong.. I hope I am)
Basepaws' jobs page advertises that their jobs are located at LA BioMed, which is not exactly UCLA. It does a lot of industry sponsored research and also acts as a biotech startup incubator, which is what is relevant here. Basepaws is a for-profit startup, not a research focused lab. There are real veterinary genetics labs out there (for felines, good examples being UC Davis and U. Missouri with its Feline Genome Project) and real research being performed and published by amazing researchers who are truly committed to advancing feline health. UCLA doesn't even have a vet school. It's difficult for me to believe the people at Basepaws are seriously motivated by the possibility of advancing feline veterinary medicine.
Some associations accept silver Somalis, but this is still a ticked tabby cat.
Persians are a super popular breed, so, statistically speaking, it’s not such a long-shot, but, I agree that’s if she does have Persian influence, she’s hiding it well.Just got my first report back from basepaws. I was most curious about the breed report. the wildcat report seems to me like pure fantasy since most of the cats can't interbreed with domestics anyways.
So, I have a Japanese street cat that even looks like a j-bob without the tail mutation and the closest breed result was Persian?...
