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Hiss & Tell: Cat Behavior and Beyond
Welcome to "Hiss & Tell" a cat podcast where we delve deep into the fascinating world of feline behavior with your host, Kristiina Wilson, MA, CCBC, a professional animal behaviorist with years of experience in understanding our feline friends.
Each episode of "Hiss & Tell" features insightful discussions with a diverse range of guests, including leading veterinarians, renowned social media cat personalities, dedicated researchers and scientists, talented cat photographers, experts in cat behavior and training and so much more.
Join us as we explore a myriad of topics, from decoding the complexities of pet loss to unraveling the mysteries of feline health and behavior. Discover the latest research findings, practical tips for training your cat, and heartwarming stories that highlight the unique bond between cats and their human companions.
Whether you're a seasoned cat owner, a feline enthusiast, or simply curious about the inner workings of our purring companions, "Hiss & Tell" is your go-to podcast for all things cat behavior. So grab your favorite feline friend, cozy up, and let's embark on this enlightening journey together!
Hiss & Tell: Cat Behavior and Beyond
Unraveling Cat Genetics with Dr. Leslie Lyons
What secrets do our feline friends hold in their DNA? Join us on a captivating exploration into the world of cat genetics with the esteemed Dr. Leslie Lyons. We promise you'll gain a newfound appreciation for how cats, with their genetic parallels to humans, serve as invaluable models in biomedical research and how their genetic diversity enriches our understanding of their origins and health.
The mysteries of cat coat colors and curious phenotypes are unraveled as we explore phenomena like curled ears and taillessness. Dr. Lyons explains the X-chromosome inactivation that results in striking tortoiseshell patterns and the rare occurrence of tortoiseshell male chimeras. You'll hear about the surprising forensic potential of cat fur DNA analysis, which could one day help identify our mischievous feline companions. These genetic insights not only offer a deeper connection to our furry friends but also present a scientific frontier in understanding variations in feline appearances.
We also navigate the complexities of feline genetic health, tackling conditions like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and polycystic kidney disease. With advancements in genetic testing and the increasing accessibility of genome sequencing, Dr. Lyons discusses the promise of precision medicine in enhancing feline healthcare. We underscore the vital role of genetic testing in responsible breeding, aiming for a future where genetic markers can inform wellness checks and safeguard the health of cats for generations to come. This is more than a conversation about cats—it's a journey into the genetic tapestry that shapes their existence.
Hi and welcome to Hiss and Tell. A Cat Behavior and More. Podcast hosted by me, christina Wilson, animal behaviorist. My guest today is Dr Leslie Lyons, a professor of comparative medicine and the director of the Feline Genetics and Comparative Medicine Laboratory at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine. That was a mouthful. We're going to be talking all about feline genetics, which is something that I've always been really interested in and, I have to be honest, I don't understand. So let's get into it. Hi and welcome to Hiss and Tell. I am your host, christina Wilson, and with me today is Dr Leslie Lyons. She is the Gilbreth McLaurin Endowed Professor of Comparative Medicine at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine. Welcome, dr Lyons.
Kristiina Wilson:Oh, thanks, wonderful to be with you.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:And Happy New Year to everyone.
Kristiina Wilson:Happy New Year to you. Can you just give us a little bit of basic information about your background, your education, all of that jazz?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I was born and raised in Uniontown, pennsylvania, which is about an hour south of Pittsburgh, so all my education ended up being at Pittsburgh a BS degree in biochemistry and master's in human genetics, and then my PhD in human genetics. And so while I was getting exposed to different areas of genetics in my graduate training, I decided that I wanted to do something called comparative genetics. So I interviewed with several groups and ended up going to the National Cancer Institute, which sometimes was renamed, dubbed the National Cat Institute. It started out as a lab of viral carcinogenesis and then changed its name to genomic diversity.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:But, um, so I never actually chose to, even though my last name is lions. I I never thought I would work on cats, and so I wanted to do comparative genomics, which meant working on a different species other than humans and relating that information back to humans, so like for biomedical models and diseases and things like that. And it just so happens that the NCI worked on cats, and so even then I had the choice of cats, fish or cows and I picked that lab because they had ties with still human genetics and evolution, which I wanted to learn more about evolution, so I was assigned cats.
Kristiina Wilson:Oh, okay.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Yeah, and for your postdoc and generally. Your postdoc is what sets your career, and so once that happened, never look back.
Kristiina Wilson:That's for us. You know, yeah, do you have cats at home, or what kind of pets do you have at home, if any?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:I was. I was always raised with a cat. We always had at least one, usually one. And now at home I have three random bred cats, you know, born under my porch and could never capture the female. She was quite smart, so after three seasons I ended up with three of her babies and yeah, so yeah.
Kristiina Wilson:I get it. We have 13 cats that way, so yeah, just exactly yeah. When you live out in the forest they just start piling up and yeah, it happens. Is there something that you find the most fascinating kind of about working with cats on a genetic level that sort of differentiates them from other species?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Oh well, there's just just the fact that you know, once I sit back and start to appreciate cats, that just overall their entire biology and as a species in evolution, you know they're generally at the top of their ecosystem, even though they all come in different sizes. For their ecosystem they're they're the top predator, the apex predator, and and then also just watching them move around your house and you know they're just like moving artwork and and stuff. So once you start to appreciate them, so their genetics are not so much different than many other species, it actually mimics humans quite well.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:So that's quite fascinating and quite useful for biomedical models. But you know, still trying to understand their behavior is still just fascinating. So it's been quite fun working with cats.
Kristiina Wilson:Yep, I mean, I get it. I spend all my time trying to understand their behavior, especially the ones in our own house, so I totally, totally get that. So how does your research contribute to understanding genetic diversity among all of the different cat breeds?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Yeah, well, we embarked on a project that specifically was designed to look at the genetic diversity of cat breeds and also of cat populations around the world, and one that's interesting to cat owners and cat breeders how do they relate to one another? But, more importantly for me, and why we did it, is because the genetic resources, the tools that we make, the genome sequence and the DNA markers that we need, we needed to make sure that they worked in all different breeds and populations of cats. So we did this big genetic diversity project so that we could figure out are we developing good resources for everybody? But a lot of the side information that came out of that is well, where is a Persian cat really from and where is an Abyssinian really from, and are these cats from where we think they are?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:and most of the time they are. So most of your Southeast Asian cats are your Siamese and your Oriental and your Burman and your Korat. Those, those fit perfectly well. Japanese bobtail does not. The bobtail definitely comes from the Far East and from. Japan and those regions, but the rest of the cat doesn't. And so it's hard to say well, we know the tail came from there but the rest of the DNA is not saying that.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:And then most of the other cats are western european derived, but your mao and your turkish angora, turkish van, are definitely mediterranean uh breeds of cats and stuff. So that's, that's pretty cool that you can actually tell some regional origins of your domestic cats whether they're a breed or not, and then also we can figure out which breeds are related to one another, which ones are genetically diverse enough that you know are healthy breeding populations, where other ones we kind of have to worry about.
Kristiina Wilson:Right, and that leads me into my next question, which was in terms of genetic health, are there particular breeds that you think need more attention, or genetic monitoring?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Well, that's two different questions. That's fair. Yes, yeah, absolutely. There's some breeds that need some genetic help, and what we have to keep in mind is that if you have low genetic diversity, that is not always a death sentence, because that has meant you probably already purged all the bad things in your population. So there are many populations that have low genetic diversity and are perfectly healthy.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:But what we worry about is when the new case of the flu comes along, when the new case of coronavirus comes along for cats, will your immune system be diverse enough that you can fight that off Right? And so that's what you worry about with low genetic diversity is some type of new insult to the population. So you could end up losing a good chunk of the population, but then the rest survives and expands again. So cat breeds that we worry about are definitely. You know, I first started this with a project on Havana Browns and they wanted to know are we genetically diverse enough? And I said, well, okay, from our new markers that were developed by Marilyn Minotti, raymond at the NCI, from those markers they look like they're pretty low, but how do they compare to the rest of the breeds we don't know.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:So then we started this whole project on looking at all these different breeds and so, fortunately, when I said they were low, they were low compared to a lot of the different breeds. But even lower were the burmese and the singapura and things like that, where breeds that are kind of taken off the streets right, such as siberians, norwegian forest cats, mancoons, manx cats, those have very high genetic diversity, rivaling random bred cats, and so they're they're hard to put as a breed because their genetics is so much just like a western european cat right so it's.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:It's hard to say are they manx or are they western european cat? Well, they're a western european cat, but it's hard to, unless you type them for the tail. Then you know okay, western european cat with no tail, that's a manx, you know right, yeah, got it.
Kristiina Wilson:So let's move into talking about what I think a lot of people want to learn more about, which is feline coat color genetics. Can you give us a little bit of just a basic overview, and then we can jump into all of the different studies that you have had your hand in in coat color genetics?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Yeah Well, cats are marvelous. You, you know everything you need to know about genetics. You can learn from your cat. And even some of the earliest geneticists back in the early 1900s, when they first rediscovered mendelian genetics, looked at cats and said, hey, look at that, a lot of orange cats tend to be male and a lot of tortoiseshell cats tend to be female. And, and look at that, a lot of white cats tend to be deaf. And and these cats with these blotched coat color patterns, their parents can be normal, but then they're blotched. So cats were early used to really highlight that many mammals had Mendelian genetics Right. And so most of the major coat colors and phenotypes, like curled ears and no tails, have been identified. Not all of them, but most.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:All of them all the major coat colors and so you can remember them by going through the alphabet A is for agouti, b is for brown, c is for color, d is for dilute, e is for extension, f is for fold, g is for gloves and da-da-da-da-da. So really there's an assignment for most every letter and our lab has helped to find several of the colors, but a lot of the curly fur types as well. And at this point in time you know what forensic people would love to do, is you find a dna sample and you would love to be able to genetically type that for dna sample and know what the assailant looks like. If you did that with cat fur, you can do it because we know all the colors for a cat.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:So even if you found a white fur, you could tell whether that was a dominant white cat or a cat with bi color, like Sylvester the cat, or whether it was. You know, you can tell whether it's like a Siamese and that white cat is actually a very light cream or something like that. So so cats can't, you know, be careful cats, you can't get away with any crimes because you can actually see what you look like, and that's what, that's what forensics wants to be able to do.
Kristiina Wilson:Right, yeah, that's funny. I love the idea that. I mean, we all know that cats are out there actually committing crimes, so not, so, not even really a joke. They're just being or just in our house, just being annoying. So do you want to like really? I don't want to say drill down, but really talk about how the gene expression works, in most orange-coated cats being male and most tortoise cats being female. How does that work?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Okay, so why do we have the scenario where orange cats tend to be more likely males, and tortoiseshell cats should be females, right? And that's because of an interesting process called exonactivation, also known as lionization. Mary lion discovered this, who I would love to track back to england to see if I'm related to her, and some should yeah, that would be way cool, but um, so the fact is, females, uh, female mammals, have two x chromosomes and males have an X and a Y and this is one coat color in cats.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:That's actually what we call sex linked. It's on the X chromosome. So you have a gene that is on the X chromosome and which has recently been published's. It's a gene that's called r-gap, some number, and so that gene.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:We're not sure exactly how that works, but we now know it's a new gene involved with the pathway for pigment production and so when it's normal, you just have a normal colored cat right, and when you have a mutation this 5kb insertion deletion then that affects the gene and the regulation of the gene and pathways downstream and that will make everything into this lighter color, orange coloration. So now what?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:no matter what base color the cat is, it's now going to be changed to an orange hue in in some way and since males only have one x chromosome, statistically it's more likely if you have one x, you only need one x with a mutation that has orange on it and you're going to look like you're an orange cat, right, where if you're a female, you need both X chromosomes to look that way, and when both do, then the female can be orange as well. But when the cat is, when the female cat has a normal X and an orange X, then this X inactivation takes place, and so in every cell of our body one of the X's gets turned off. We inactivate it, the females do, and long ago that's how you used to actually determine if someone was male or female. You'd do a buckle scraping and you'd look for this bright, fluorescent body and it was called the bar body and that was the inactivated x chromosome, and so you would. That person has to be a female. They have a bar body, and so that still happens and cats have that.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:So in cells that the orange X is inactivated, that means you're going to see the black pigment and then vice versa, right, black X is inactivated, you'll see, see orange. Now that starts very early in embryonic development and stays consistent. So a tortoiseshell cat doesn't change. Yeah, it's a tortoiseshell pattern, but then also, people always want to know. You know what about those cats with that straight thing down their face and one side's orange and one side's black?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:is that two cats that have been squashed together. No, that's how your body develops, your body. The cells migrate from the dorsal, from your, from your central notochord, and they move from the back to the front and they close in the front. So you have two halves to your face. One half comes in and it has the orange X turned off, so that's going to be black and the other one's going to be orange and you get this perfect line right down the middle of your face.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:So if you think about children with cleft lips, or if you've ever seen little babies born with little umbilical hernias. Those are known as midline closure defects. They're very common and can just be accidental, and cats have them too. When you see that little white locket and that little white belly spot, that's a midline closure defect, and so that's that's why these cats have that perfect line down their face. They're not they're generally not two cats mixed together, which can happen.
Kristiina Wilson:Yeah.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Which can happen. That's called a chimera and if you find a torte male, that's likely. What has happened is during the early development of embryos, maybe two fused together and you have an XXXY male.
Kristiina Wilson:Right.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Generally they're. They're sterile, but you can get, and it's not as uncommon as you think. Yeah, so that means there's probably lots of mammals, lots of people that are that way too. But we can see it with a cat, because you can see the coat color. Yes, so it probably occurs more than what we see, because if the cat doesn't have the orange, you're not going to be able to see that. It's different.
Kristiina Wilson:Right, yeah, that's so cool. So that's happening to people too. Oh, totally, I mean it's happening to all mammals, right yeah?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:I used to love what we were just talking in the lab about the TV show House. Oh yeah, and House actually had an episode where the person was a chimera.
Kristiina Wilson:Oh, that's cool. I need to rewatch that show. That was a good show. So not to go on too much about cat coat color genetics, cause I'm sure that you talk about this all the time, but I know that you also were an author. Oh, yes, the salt and pepper thing, yes, so, as a person from Finland, this is very exciting for me. So can you tell listeners a little bit about this new cat coat color that has been discovered? Yes, salmiak.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:It's not very widespread, so it was found in Finland, and it's an interesting kind of white patterning on the cats, and part of them have this salt and pepper type of look where some of the hairs are white. Now they're. That's not to be confused with roaning, so there's something known as roaning in many species, where some of the hairs are black and some are white as well. So we know that in horses and cattle and other species this is not that and this is the gene known as kit, and it's the same gene that causes dominant white and also causes bicolor and the van pattern with and also the gloving in bermans, and so it's a new dna variant that is affecting the regulation of that gene which is leading to this coat color.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:So that's a very interesting part is that we're starting to find more and more that, you know, we used to always think just the action part of the gene was the coding part, just the exons of a gene. And if you have a mutation in the exons, boom you got it. Well, that's true, boom you got it. But half the time we can't find the mutation in the exons. So we're now starting to find that there's these crazy mutations that are either in the introns, which controls dominant white and white spotting, or outside of the gene, which is such the case in sal salmi, that affect regulation. And so we're finding that things that affect regulation, which are harder to find, affect a lot of our body processes.
Kristiina Wilson:Did they tell you that salmiak is actually really disgusting salty licorice that we eat?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Oh, I tried it.
Kristiina Wilson:That's what I was asking.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:I was wondering if anyone gave you any. It's so bad. I was just there for our cat and dog meeting, which is sponsored by Perina, and so every two years we have a feline and canine international congress on feline and canine genetics and genomics, and that's hosted by Perina, and so we had that meeting, and this year it was hosted by dr lohi in finland oh we had.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:They gave me some of this licorice candy and it was the most foul thing I've ever and and I'm watching, I'm watching them and they're going no, this is like really good, and they're putting it in and they're completely eating it. Oh, yeah. And and I was like oh my God, I, I, literally, it was not something I could swallow.
Kristiina Wilson:No, it's. I used to prank my American friends when they would come to visit me there and I'd be like here, try our traditional candy. And then I'd be ready with like my old you know, this was 800 years ago ready to take their picture as like, to watch their faces change from like politeness to like I can't physically have this in my mouth anymore and they would spit it out with like drool, and I have so many pictures of my friends just like because it's if you don't grow up from birth eating that.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Yeah absolutely not, but yeah, it's kind of like a pickled herring. I maybe, I don't know. Yeah, you don't know, yeah you don't want it, don't ever.
Kristiina Wilson:If you go back there, don't eat a fish in a can Like don't be getting near any, any of our traditional foods.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:You want to avoid that.
Kristiina Wilson:But yeah, I didn't know if you'd been tricked and it turned out I wasn't tricked.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:That's fair. You were, no, I wasn't tricked, but I was told to try it and they said you might not like it. And yeah, they knew you wouldn't like it. Yeah, they knew.
Kristiina Wilson:Nobody likes that stuff. Okay Anyways. So then, lastly, let's just quickly talk about the albinism in domestic cats. And exactly what is that? Because I think a lot of people may think that oh, my white cat is an albino like. How is that different? And what were kind of the key insights that you found when you did your studies on albinism in domestic cats?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:um yep, yeah, well, you know. So the term albinism generally means lack of pigment.
Kristiina Wilson:Right.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:And so, however, we generally associate this with the tyrosinase mutations, which are the mutations that cause Siamese Burmese. I think now we also know mocha is involved there and then at least two different varieties of complete albino cats, in which they look completely white, are also identified, and then, historically, that they would be called pink-eyed albinos. Well, that's a bit of a misnomer.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:What's actually going on is that the eyes are so light blue that, um, you can actually see the reflex of the retina in the back of the eye, which has a lot of blood flow and and stuff, and so then then it looks like they're pink eyed, but no, they, they don't have pink in their eyes forever.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Um, they just their blue eye color is really really really light, and this occurs absolutely in humans as well, and so dominant white is kind of a type of albinism as well, right, but we generally historically link the term albinism with the tyrosinase mutations, and so we know that some of these mutations are just sensitive to heat, so what we call heat shock proteins, and so if the temperature is just a tad like a tenth of a degree different, that will turn the gene on or off, and so where a cat is cooler, you think you go out in the snow.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:And where do you get cold? Your nose, your ears, your fingers, your toes, and so where the cat is cooler, the gene is working, and so you get the normal coloration of the cat, which is like a seal point is a black cat right and um, and where the cat is warmer on its body, um, then the gene gets turned off and you get no pigment production. Now, as those cats get older, just as people get older, our skin gets a bit thinner, it's harder for us to keep warmer, and so you see that siamese will tend to get darker through their lives, in their body coloration as well. So they first start out with these very dramatic points. Well, they're first. They start out born as kittens and they come out all white snow white.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:People think they're albinos and then once they start to regulate their own body temperature remember, inside of the cat is 101 degrees Once they come out and start dealing with their own regulation of their body temperature.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Remember, inside of the cat is 101 degrees right. Once they come out and start dealing with their own uh regulation of their body temperature, then you'll see the color starting to come in uh, for those kittens and stuff, uh, and then they get. They get tend to get darker with age all over the body. But you can, you know you can mess with your cat, you can shave its hair and you could put your name in the cat.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:And if you put it at the right temperature, the coloration will come in differently. Until that all sheds out Right, until you have a complete hair shed cycle, then the cat will have different colors in its hair.
Kristiina Wilson:Well, let's maybe not encourage that behavior amongst everybody. That's pretty funny actually.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:We'll see how many people do that, but that's, that's how breeders do get the very dramatic colorations in their cats, keeping the house temperature a little different.
Kristiina Wilson:Yeah, that's. That's super interesting. So, moving on from cat color genetics, um cat color, coat color genetics good at talking today let's move on to diseases and inherited disorders. Can you talk a little bit about the progress that was made in identifying genetic markers for, like feline diseases like polycystic kidney disease and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Yeah, cats were doing very well because of the genetic resources we've been able to develop.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:we have one of the best genome assemblies there are for any species and that's work really led by bill murphy at texas a&m and stuff that we have these wonderful resources for cats. So it we have the 99 lives project where we take all the genomes that have been produced by other people and we put all the genetic variation into one big file and then we share that file with everybody. We use that file to also say if I have a new cat that comes in with the disease, it ought to be rare, so I shouldn't find it in the 99 lives project. So the 99 Lives cats tell me all what's normal.
Kristiina Wilson:What is?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:normal DNA variation and then you add in the one sick cat and you say, ha, look, it has this variant that nobody else has. That's a good clue that that is a new disease variant for cats. So we're finding, with polycystic kidney disease, Persian cats had probably up to at least 38% of some Persian cats throughout the world, throughout the world had polycystic kidney disease and now that's way below 5%. So genetic testing has been effective.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:We did it slowly over time, didn't lose any major catteries, didn't say everybody get rid of all their pk caps right away, but the idea is to slow when it's at a high frequency. You want to slowly eradicate so you don't cause other genetic bottlenecks, and so that's true with hcm too. Hcm and main coons, high frequency.
Kristiina Wilson:Yes.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:So you want to slowly eradicate that. But a complication with HCM is there's more than one types of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and not all cardiac disease is HCM.
Kristiina Wilson:Right.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:As well, and so two major mutations have been found for the Maine Coon and the ragdoll. It turns out that the one identified for Sphinx cats is probably just a polymorphism. For Sphinx cats it doesn't have a real high correlation with disease and unfortunately for that disease in humans there's just hundreds of genes that are known that can cause it, and a lot of people have what we call private mutations. They have their own mutation that causes the disease, and unfortunately we're probably finding that with cats as well. So the easy ones were identified, and not that it was easy when it was done.
Kristiina Wilson:Sure.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:The more common ones have been identified, the more common ones have been identified, and now we're probably going to find that small groups of cats, small groups of related cats, might have a common variant, but the next group of cats might not.
Kristiina Wilson:Right.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:And so that's the big challenge with ACM, but we are finding new variants for PKD as well. It's a very, very big gene for PKD as well.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:It's a very, very big gene, and in humans, most families with PKD have their own new private mutation as well, and so we have found some Siberians and Bengal cats that have their own mutations, and I just found a couple recently as well. So those will be coming out in the next year or so. So cats, humans, cows, pigs we all have pretty much the same genes about 21,000 genes or so, give or take. Some dogs and animals that smell well have bigger repertoires or olfactory genes or maybe have bigger repertoires of vomeral nasal genes that smell, where you do that weird flaming. Yeah, right, yeah, so those are.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:those are for pheromones yeah and so we see that those repertoires change between species. But mostly you have all the same genes that make a cat a cat, also make a human a human, and probably it's the regulation of those genes. So back to the regulation story. We're going to find more things are involved with regulation than the actual coding of the protein for cats. So cats, we have about close, close to maybe 200 identified dna variants.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Now, maybe only a third of those are coat colors and fun things we want to play with, right, but the rest are maybe 30 or so in our breeds, and so breed cats should absolutely be genetically testing for these mutations and trying to get them out of their breed populations. If they're high frequency and it's a small cat breed, then we do it slowly. If it's a very low frequency, then hey, we can get rid of it very quickly, right. So, um, I would. I would think that, other than like hcm and maybe one or two other ones, we could probably eradicate most of the known genetic disease from cats within the next five years very safely.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Now, that doesn't mean we're always going to find new things right we'll always find new things, but, uh, the things that are there we could get rid of with just a little bit of work, and and so, through the world small animal vet association, which I'm part of, we have proposed to the World Cat Congress that there's four things we would love for you to do and, if you're responsible, this is what we're promoting.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:We need to be responsible cat breeders and owners, and one of those things is genetically test, make it mandatory and help to eliminate those genetic traits, and so that's definitely high on the list of the things that we'd like to see cat breeders do.
Kristiina Wilson:I mean that would be amazing, that would be amazing to eliminate. It could be done.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:It can be done, and it can be done in such a fashion that it's not going to put anybody in out of business, right, and it's just then. Once it's done, you don't have to worry about it.
Kristiina Wilson:Yeah, exactly. So speaking to the layperson, who's not a cat breeder, obviously do you think that feline health care could be similarly tailored based on individual genetic profiles of a cat?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Absolutely. We're really trying to promote precision medicine for cats, and so that's the new fancy word for humans too. And the cost of genome sequencing is so low now it's under $500. Now that doesn't mean in the human healthcare system. That's how much it's going to cause.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:But that's how much I can sequence a cat for right, and so, absolutely, we can use the DNA profile of your cat to predict its health and maybe identify the cause of some odd health condition. And if you know the gene and you know the mutation, you know, sometimes you can actually say, hey, there's a therapy for that. And so, instead of just treating symptoms, you might actually be able to use a gene therapy or at least pick the right drug that is effective. And so we're hoping to see, just as part of wellness tests, that cats get like their blood type done, and you know that's something easy. Most humans know their blood type, you know. That doesn't mean you don't check it when you do a blood transfusion, but it's nice to know your blood type. There's something called multiple drug resistance gene, mdr1, and that's been known to be the gene that affects the metabolism of like ivermectin.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:so in dogs four white feet don't treat with ivermectin for worming right. They're very sensitive to ivermectin and we see that cats have the exact same mutation. So it's very, very low percentage. But it would be important to know because it might affect drug resistance. Genes not affect only one drug, they affect many different drugs right right.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:So we would like to see some genetics being part of every cat, random bred cat or not. Go get your blood type done, maybe mdr1 and maybe a few other things, but if you're a breed cat, definitely be checking um. And that that just came out in a new paper with journal of feline medicine and surgery, one of the clinical spotlights, and so I I wrote a paper on that and it it has a table that says if you're this breed, yes, i's the things you should be worrying about.
Kristiina Wilson:I have that paper printed out right here there you go. Table two. I will post it on the episode page so that if you're interested in downloading and reading, I will post the link to this paper, because it is really interesting and you can look and see the specific genes for each type of breed and then the diseases that accompany them. So it was a good read.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:But I do want to point out that most diseases that we identify, whether they're often found in a single random bred cat, right, and that means they're going to be very unlikely to be ever found again. And so the genetic testing companies do most of them not all of them, most of them do a very, very good job. You know, you should pick the ones that have very good customer service, or maybe ones that have good relationships with universities and contribute to science and research. But also keep in mind that, oh, we hear we do 100 genetic tests for cats. Oh, we hear we do 100 genetic tests for cats.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Well, it's probably very unlikely that your cat's going to have any of those genetic diseases, unless your cat is sick, yeah Right. So just word to the wise is just more tests are not always better. And if you do have something that comes back weird in one of what we call these large panel tests, you should, before you make a breeding decision, get that double checked, get it verified, just like you would do in human medicine, get a second opinion actually I want to ask you quickly a listener question is it true that black cats are genetically predisposed to respiratory illnesses?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:you know, I have never heard that before I haven't either.
Kristiina Wilson:I've never heard of it.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:I'm not sure. I've heard that our black cats maybe tend to be a little more obese. I've heard that before. Huh, and because it's the agouti gene and the agouti gene does have an allele in mice that tends towards obesity, so I can see where somebody has made that leap, but I don't know about anything about respiratory things whatsoever that tends towards obesity, so I can see where somebody has made that leap, but I don't know about anything about respiratory things whatsoever. And in fact most coat colors in cats are not linked with any types of diseases and traits whatsoever.
Kristiina Wilson:Well, that's an important piece of information to know, except for the deafness and you know Right, yeah, and white cats, cats right that's a whole another story, why that happens. Yeah, oh, do you want to quickly sum that up? Oh well, yeah, sure, I think that's also out there and kind of dominant white cats.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:They don't have the cells that produce pigment all right, melanocytes so they're not in their skin, and so they have all the genes to make pigment, but they don't have the cells, and so those cells are also important, for they go to the back of the eye and so make the tapetum lucidum, that's the reflective eye layer, and so when you have a dominant white cat, you'll see, or a blue-eyed, you'll see, that has red eye shine versus the yellow golden eye shine, yellow-green eye shine of a cat with pigment in their eye.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:But those melanocytes are also important, so cells do more than one job, and so they're also important for the inner ear. So they migrate to the cochlea, to the inner ear, so they migrate to the cochlea, to the inner ear, and when they're absent then you have deprivation in your hearing, and so that can be sporadic. So not all white cats have blue eyes, and if they have blue eyes it is more likely that they'll be deaf as well. So that's because of just melanocytes and how they migrate, and it can be kind of chance.
Kristiina Wilson:Right, okay, so what steps can cat owners take to help advance feline genetics research, if any?
Dr. Leslie Lyons:most cat owners are not out there doing hard science, but oh well, I mean, there's there's wonderful things is when every cat is important. Because it's important to have control cats, it's important to just have the normal cat right. So that's how what we control everything, to compare everything to. So, um one donating money, um to the 99 lives project at university of missouri, that can be done and it is tax deductible, um. So on my website you'll see a 99 lives link. You could donate money and also give a blood sample of your cat and we'll sequence that cat and that will be part of the controls as well. And so anybody can do that. And then, if you're a breeder, you know we can find these things. If you have something interesting, new that maybe you don't want to talk about, you should come forward, because we can find them so quickly and everything's confidential.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:If somebody hears about it. It's not going to be from us, right, so? But we can help you find those mutations so quickly that we can, tentatively. So you know, sometimes they are found very fast and that might be in within a year, right, or we might find it within a month, but when we think back, sometimes projects took five, 10 years.
Kristiina Wilson:Yeah.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Right. So now we can do it much more quickly and much lower cost. So and cats do very well, you know, you take a buckle swab, a Q-tip, and rub it in their mouth, and there's little videos on my website on how to do that properly. You know it's not a viral swab right, yeah no, don't go way back in the mouth, right, don't poke the kitty yeah just put it, just put it underneath the whisker pad and rub it around, and you can donate dna that as well.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:And so just participating. Hey, I got a cat, I'd just like to get to participate and I know I'm not going to get anything that's going to help the health of my cat, but it's because it's normal, it's fine.
Kristiina Wilson:Right.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:But it will help other cats. What's your website? It's felinegenome at University of Missouri. It's felinegeneticsmissouriedu.
Kristiina Wilson:Okay, wonderful, and for everyone listening, I will have that linked at the bottom of the Hiss and Tell podcast website episode for this episode. So yeah, thank you so much, dr Lyons, for being on the show and for talking to us about cat genetics. This was so interesting. I wish I can have you back for part two and three to ask you more questions about all of your papers.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:I like Kiss and Tell.
Kristiina Wilson:Thank you, it was really trying to find a funny name that would bring people in to do more. You know, feline education. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure.
Dr. Leslie Lyons:Thanks for education. Thank you so much, we really appreciate it.
Kristiina Wilson:Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review wherever you listen. It super helps For more information and to support our podcast. Check out our website at hissandtellpodcastcom. You can also find us on Instagram at hissandtellpodcast. Music provided by Cat Beats.
