This chromosome is made of almost 50 million base pairs of DNA that code for more than 500 genes.

'The dog has been man's best friend for centuries, and now the genome of the dog could well be man's next best friend,' says Matthew Breen, professor of genomics at North Carolina State University (NCSU).

'With so much genetic material to consider, one can see why figuring out which genes play a key role in meningiomas is extremely difficult,' says Breen, according to a NCSU release.

'By looking at tumours seen in both humans and dogs we have a simple way to narrow the search: we compare the affected areas of a human chromosome with related areas on dog chromosomes.

'This works because dogs and humans are genetically similar and both get the same kinds of cancers. While we share much of our genetic material, the DNA of a dog is organised differently to our own and this makes it possible to isolate smaller 'shared' regions of genetic data rather than looking at an entire chromosome,' concluded Breen.