In this study, we examined the gene expression frequency of canine tongue mucosa and analyzed the gene structure of canine taste receptor-related gene families using a next-generation sequencer. First, we performed RNA-seq analysis on canine mucosa samples, obtained 984,903 short-read sequence tags, and mapped them to the canine whole-genome sequences. Gene expression analysis reveals S100A8 to be the most frequently expressed gene, while skeletal musclerelated, cardiac muscle-related, and detoxification-related genes were also found to be highly expressed. Sequence tags of the taste receptor-related genes were mapped to the 5' terminal region of TAS2R40, TRPV1, and PKD1. Based on the genomic region of TAS2R40, where the tags mapped, we deduced the primary sequence of a 306 amino-acid canine TAS2R40 protein, which shows 76% homology to the human TAS2R40, and 62% homology to the mouse TAS2R40.

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Silica calculus is unusual in urolithiasis in dogs. We conducted epidemiological study on silica calculus in dogs around Kagoshima area. Information questionnaires from veterinarians and clients indicated that silica urolithiasis was not related to food and dog's habit (eating clod), but was associated with drinking tap water. Silica concentration of tap water in Kagoshima area was obviously higher than that in another area in Japan. A brand of mineral water made in Kagoshima area also had high silica level. Though intake of high level silica in water did not affect urine silica concentration experimentally, our results indicated that it is beneficial to use low silica level water to prevent silica urolithiasis in dogs.

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A lifestyle of dogs has greatly changed during last decades. This may be related due to the combination of an increase of the percentage of indoor dog and popularity of the commercial pet food utilization. Such lifestyle change in dogs may influence on their daily energy requirement (DER). The doubly labeled water (DLW) method is a well known technique to determine DER by measuring integral CO₂ production for up one week from the difference in elimination rates of deuterium and ¹⁸O from labeled body water. This method is not required any restrictions to alter dog's lifestyle during the study. Therefore, the DLW method was used for determining DER of house-owned dogs (n = 5). It was found that two dogs had the same DER based on the using the DLW method. However, the DLW method resulted in slightly lower DER estimation than the conventional calculation in other three dogs. Regression analysis revealed there was a positive correlation between the DER from the DLW method and the conventional DER calculation (R = 0.935). This suggests that the DLW method is effective method to estimate DER in the house-owned dogs. It is unknown why three dogs showed lower DER by using the DLW method based on this study. Therefore, a further study will be investigated with increasing number of dogs to fully understand the effectiveness of the DLW method for estimating DER in the house-owned dogs.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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