Thoroughbred Race Horses All Traced to One 17th-Century Mare
Posted by Unknown in Genetics, Horse and Equine, Research and Studies, UK on Tuesday, 29 January 2013
(ABC News)
All the great names in thoroughbred horse racing — from Secretariat to
Man O’War, from Seabiscuit to Seattle Slew — they’re all related, and a
team of geneticists has now traced their talent for speed back to a
single ancestor. The “speed gene” that made them all so fast was
apparently a genetic aberration, and it probably started with one
British mare who lived in the mid-17th century.
Emmeline
Hill of University College Dublin led a team that analyzed DNA in 593
horses from 22 modern breeds, as well as museum specimens from 12
historically famous stallions. Modern genetics have become sophisticated
enough that they could tell, with considerable precision, what the
horses had in common.
“The
results show that the ‘speed gene’ entered the thoroughbred from a
single founder, which was most likely a British mare about 300 years ago
when local British horse types were the pre-eminent racing horses,
prior to the formal foundation of the thoroughbred racehorse,” said Hill
in a prepared statement.
She and her colleagues published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.
Lest
this seem like some arcane animal study, it does involve a big-money
sport and, more important, questions about how genetic characteristics
can be inherited and traced. If you can decipher the genes that make
thoroughbreds so fast, say the researchers, you can also find clues to
genetic diseases in people. Thoroughbred horses are useful for study
because the records of their ancestry are — forgive the pun — really,
really thorough, going back centuries.
The
great speed horses all shared two genes associated with muscle
development. The combination did not show up in regular farm horses, or
donkeys, or zebras.
Horses
with the two genes were consistently top sprinters. It’s no accident
that the Kentucky Derby is a mile and a quarter, usually won in just
more than two minutes. Other genetic combinations were found in horses
that were slower but able to run longer.
Place your bets.
