Kerstin Lindblad-Toh wants to find the genes that make dogs sick - to make people healthy.

When you are looking for genetic mutations in humans, you need a lot of patients and a lot of healthy persons because the spectrum of mutations is so complicated. When we are looking at dogs, the disease mutations have often become common, so it’s much easier to find them with a smaller number of dogs. We can use only a few hundred dogs.

Dogs just like people get a lot of different diseases. They can get cancer or diabetes or heart disease. The Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever breed is affected to a greater extent by SLE. In both dogs and humans, the disease causes the immune system to periodically attack joints and organs. In Sweden, about 400 people fall ill every year.