One of the top priorities of the ABCA Health & Education Foundation (HEF) is to establish a DNA Bank for the Border Collie.

Over the years, hundreds of samples have been obtained from Border Collies for various specific research projects. Many of those samples have been used to good effect, while many of them have been mishandled or otherwise lost, but in either case the DNA in those samples is no longer available. What the HEF hopes to do — aided by advances in storage methods, sequencing and techniques to amplify and copy DNA — is to build up a library of DNA samples that covers as wide a portion of the Border Collie genome as possible. An extensive bank of this type, combined with pedigree information and health information about the dogs sampled, will put us in a good position to address health issues that may arise in the future, as well as to attract researchers to work on our priority problems and areas of interest. It takes DNA, data and dollars to advance scientific research. We look for the DNA Bank to supply the first two of those needs.

The DNA Bank dovetails nicely with the HEF’s other immediate priority — EAOD research. The samples and data we collect for that research, over and above what the scientists working on that project need, will be preserved and banked as resources for future research.