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Canine Mendelian disease record

Congenital Eye Malformation (Discovered in the Golden Retriever)

Congenital Eye Malformation (Discovered in the Golden Retriever). Autosomal dominant (incomplete penetrance). Observed in 0 of 211 breeds tested in the Sniff Atlas, with measured variant frequencies drawn from 12,296 dogs (Donner 2023). Whether a dog carrying this variant is at risk depends on the disease’s inheritance pattern; outcome also depends on penetrance, modifiers, and environment. The frequencies below describe variant prevalence, not confirmed disease incidence.

OMIA identifier
OMIA:002208-9615
Autosomal dominant (incomplete penetrance)
Linked gene
SIX6
Human counterpart
In humans, this gene is SIX6. OMIM 606326 In people, SIX6 appears tolerant of loss-of-function variation (gnomAD v4.1 constraint, LOEUF 0.92). Constraint measures intolerance to loss-of-function only and does not indicate importance; some tolerant genes cause disease through other mechanisms. In people, variants in the SIX6 gene have conflicting classifications in ClinVar, and none is expert-reviewed. The evidence is unsettled, not that variants here are benign.
Source dataset
Sniff Atlas v1.0.1 / DOI
The human connection

A model of human colobomatous optic disc-macular atrophy-chorioretinopathy syndrome

Dogs with this condition carry a change in SIX6. In people, changes in the same gene cause colobomatous optic disc-macular atrophy-chorioretinopathy syndrome. That makes affected dogs a naturally-occurring model of the human disease, and it is part of why studying dogs moves medicine forward for everyone. It does not mean your dog has the human disease. It means the two share an underlying biology.

In people, the disease is described as: A rare genetic eye disease characterized by optic disk anomalies (bilateral colobomatous optic disks, retinal vessels arising from the peripheral optic disk) and macular atrophy. Peripapillary chorioretinal atrophy and chorioretinal and iris coloboma have also been described. Patients present with horizontal nystagmus and poor visual acuity.

In humans it is also called: ODRMD.

MONDO:0008927 OMIM 212550

Mapped from OMIA via the human disease's OMIM entry to the Mondo Disease Ontology (Monarch Initiative, CC-BY 4.0). Sniff renders this as a model-of link; the canine disease remains the subject of this page.

About this disease

From OMIA's curated record

Documented in OMIA (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals). This describes the disease as recorded in the published literature, not a prediction for any individual dog. As of 2026-06-03.

Molecular genetics

By comparing the genome sequence of one affected Golden Retriever with the sequence of 601 control genomes, Hug et al. (2019) identified a "heterozygous private nonsense variant, c.487C>T . . . in the SIX6 gene. This variant is predicted to truncate about a third of the open reading frame, p.(Gln163*) . . . We hypothesize that the residual amount of functional SIX6 protein likely to be expressed in heterozygous dogs is sufficient to explain the observed incomplete penetrance and the varying severity of the eye defects in the affected dogs."

Prevalence

Hug et al. (2019): "All three available cases were heterozygous. Five additional close relatives including the common sire were also heterozygous, but did not show any obvious eye phenotypes. The variant was absent from the 464 unrelated Golden Retrievers and 17 non-affected siblings of the cases."

Inheritance

Hug et al. (2019): "All cases traced back to the same male ancestor, but had quite diverse maternal lineages . . . . Seven out of 28 recorded puppies were affected and males and females were affected in equal proportions. As we could not identify any common ancestors in the maternal lines of the cases, we hypothesized an autosomal dominant inheritance with incomplete penetrance as the most likely mode of inheritance."

Human analog

OMIA links this condition to its human counterpart in OMIM (Mendelian Inheritance in Man), the place to read across to the deeper human literature for the same biology.

Disease · OMIM 212550 Gene · OMIM 606326

Source: OMIA (Nicholas, Tammen & the Sydney Informatics Hub), entry OMIA:002208-9615, doi:10.25910/2AMR-PV70 (CC-BY 4.0).

The evidence

Published references

The peer-reviewed papers behind this disease, curated by OMIA. Starred entries are OMIA-designated landmark papers.

  3. The Blue Book: Ocular disorders presumed to be inherited in purebred dogs. 13th Edition · https://ofa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/ACVO-Blue-Book-2021.pdf · 2021

References curated by OMIA (Nicholas, Tammen & the Sydney Informatics Hub), doi:10.25910/2AMR-PV70 (CC-BY 4.0). Full list at the OMIA entry.

Your breed

See what Congenital Eye Malformation (Discovered in the Golden Retriever) looks like in your dog's breed.
Variant frequency by breed

Observed only in small-sample breeds

Maximum variant frequency per breed across variants in the Donner 2023 cohort, with . The list below is split into well-sampled breeds (n ≥ 50 tested) and small-sample breeds (n < 50, where the Wilson CI typically spans more than 20 percentage points and frequencies should not be compared directly to the well-sampled entries). Frequencies are population-level, not per-litter or per-line.

Scope of this record

Scope

This record carries the breed-level carrier frequencies from the Donner 2023 cohort. Penetrance data (the fraction of at-risk dogs that develop the phenotype) is not yet quantified for this disease in the Sniff Atlas v1.0.1. The OMIA entry is the authoritative reference for the clinical phenotype, inheritance pattern, and gene assignment.

Predicted disease relevance at the per-dog level is UNPROVEN. The variant frequency is measured; phenotype outcome depends on penetrance, environment, and modifier loci. Consult a veterinarian for clinical interpretation.

How to cite this record

Citations

If you use this record in published work, cite the Sniff Atlas (the published dataset that carries the breed-level carrier frequencies) and the upstream sources:

  • Sniff Atlas v1.0.1 for the per-breed carrier frequencies:

    Gehring, M. (2026). Sniff Atlas v1.0.1. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20566358. CC-BY 4.0.

  • OMIA for the disease definition, inheritance, and gene assignment:

    Nicholas, F. W., & Tammen, I. (2024). OMIA. Sydney Informatics Hub, The University of Sydney. https://doi.org/10.25910/2AMR-PV70. Entry: OMIA:002208-9615.

  • Donner et al. 2023 for the breed × variant carrier-frequency cohort:

    Donner, J., Freyer, J., Davison, S., Anderson, H., Blades, M., Honkanen, L., et al. (2023). Genetic prevalence and clinical relevance of canine Mendelian disease variants in over one million dogs. PLOS Genetics, 19(2), e1010651. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1010651.

Full citation formats (BibTeX, RIS, CITATION.cff) at sniff.world/cite.

Related

Related

Last updated
Sources: Sniff Atlas v1.0.1 · OMIA OMIA:002208-9615 · Donner et al. 2023 · gnomAD v4.1 (Karczewski 2020) · ClinVar (Landrum 2018)