International Research Team to Map Disease Genes in Horses

Researchers from Kentucky and Denmark received a three-year, $155,000 grant from the Morris Animal Foundation.
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The Morris Animal Foundation has awarded a three-year, $155,000 grant to a team of researchers from Kentucky and Denmark to build a new reference genome sequence for the domestic horse. The sequence will be a much needed tool for animal researchers worldwide and the equine industry in particular because it should significantly improve the ability to understand the role of genetics in animal health and well being.

Ted Kalbfleisch, PhD, of the University of Louisville Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is the principal investigator on the grant. He will be joined in the research with Ludovic Orlando, PhD, of the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen’s National History Museum, and James MacLeod, VMD, PhD, of the University of Kentucky’s Gluck Equine Research Center, in Lexington.

Genome sequencing allows researchers to read and decipher genetic information found in DNA and is especially important in mapping disease genes—discovering the diseases a horse might be genetically predisposed to developing.

“In 2009, Morris Animal Foundation helped fund the first genome reference sequence for the domestic horse,” Kalbfleisch said. “We intend to build on this earlier work. In the past five years, there have been dramatic improvements in sequencing technology as well as the computational hardware and algorithms required to analyze the data generated by the technology. Therefore, we now have the tools necessary to vastly improve the reference genome for the horse

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