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Mexican hairless dogs were sacred to the Aztecs and are represented in statues more than 3700 years old. These dogs also have missing or abnormal teeth, elevated skin temperature that leads to their use as living hot-water bottles, and many spontaneous comedones. The condition that produces hairlessness in these dogs has been recognized as canine ectodermal dysplasia. This autosomal dominant trait maps to chromosome 17 in Mexican hairless, Peruvian hairless, and Chinese crested dogs. In all three breeds, the abnormal trait shows up in the same 7–base-pair duplication in the first exon of one gene. This gene is very similar to the mouse forkhead gene (Foxi3), and the authors propose the name FOXI3 in d…