A project bringing together researchers from six different institutions indicates that a particular variation of the gene group called myostatin, which is partly responsible for the impressive speed of the world’s highest-performing thoroughbred racehorses, has been present in the lineage of some thoroughbred horses for at least three centuries and may have come from one particular mare
The findings, published this week in the online journal Nature Communications, emerged from a study of the DNA of hundreds of living horses – including thoroughbreds and many of the world’s native breeds – as well as ancient DNA extracted from the skeletons of elite historic horses, among them the legendary Eclipse, one of the most famous horses of all time.
The research was led by Dr Emmeline Hill, a genomics scientist at University College Dublin (UCD) and Dr Mim Bower, an archaeo-geneticist at the University of Cambridge. The other institutions contributing to the study were Equinome Ltd, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Image: Parish Hall on right (a champion with Northern Dancer ancestry on both sides) wins the Group 1 Dubai Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket in October 2011 for Jim Bolger Credit: Trevor Jones, Thoroughbred Photography
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge