Recent research in horse genomics has opened up new genetic possibilities.
In 2007, the Horse Genome Project released a first draft of the horse genome sequence for analysis, which was completed two months ago.
In an e-mail interview, Claire Wade, chair of animal genetics and computational biology at the University of Sydney in Australia, wrote that the analysis of the sequence could help researchers learn more about horses and humans.
“The genome sequence enables us to learn more about what parts of the human genome are important in evolution and teaches us more about horse genetic biology.”
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Wade said scientists could learn more about human evolution by comparing the DNA of both species. Similar regions would mean that the DNA was important enough not to be changed by evolution.
“Because of the millions of years of evolutionary distance between horses and humans, we don’t expect regions like this to occur unless evolution has somehow kept them safe from change,” she said.
“This usually only happens if the regions have important function in biology.”
As with other mammals, horses and humans share some of the same DNA. Since they also suffer from many similar illnesses, this means researchers can use the horse genome to determine which genes cause or contribute certain illnesses.
For example, horses and humans can suffer from a similar form of night blindness. If researchers were to narrow down which genes were responsible for the disorder in a horse, they would be able to use their results to also narrow down the responsible gene in humans.
Wade said this process would be easier than trying to determine the gene only in humans.
“It is often easier to map genes for genetic disorders in domestic mammals than in humans because the populations are less variable and we are able to better control the environmental effects such as housing and diet,” she said.
The genome sequence may also shed light on centromeres, the region of DNA typically found near the middle of a chromosome where two identical sister chromatids come in contact. It is heavily involved in the cell division process.
“Horses … have an evolutionary new centromere, which will teach us more about how centromeres are created and what is needed for them to be functional,” Wade said.
Scientists haven’t been able to learn much about how centromeres evolve because of the difficulty in analyzing them through DNA sequencing.
However, the horse genome contains a developing centromere on equine chromosome 11. The centromere is functional but still young, allowing for the possibility of further research.
The Horse Genome Project began in 2006 and was run largely through the Broad Institute.
