By CBCNEWS - CBC.COM
Added: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 UTC

Thanks to rod-the-farmer for the link.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/11/05/tech-biology-horse-genome.html

An old grey mare named Twilight has provided an international team of researchers with the entire genetic code of a domestic horse.

The scientists say the genome sequencing has revealed more information about its evolution and domestication, and shows some similarities with other known genomes, such as those of the cow and even the human.

Twilight, an adult female thoroughbred horse from Cornell University, was the DNA donor for the genome project, published this week in the journal Science.

The DNA was analyzed and the horse genome was found to be about 2.7 billion nucleotides long, slightly larger than the genome of the domestic dog, and smaller than the genomes of both humans and cows.

Having the entire genome of the horse could lead to new breeding techniques, as well as information on diseases in both horses and humans. More than 90 hereditary diseases in horses show similarities to those in humans.

"Horses and humans suffer from similar illnesses, so identifying the genetic culprits in horses promises to deepen our knowledge of disease in both organisms," said senior author Kerstin Lindblad-Toh of the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, and Uppsala University in Sweden.
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http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/11/05/tech-biology-horse-genome.html

TAGGED: GENETICS, MEDICINE