Cloning horses

The most common techniques used to clone animals such as sheep, cows, and horses is somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). This process of reproductive cloning involves taking an unfertilized egg from a mare, stripping it of its nucleus that contains the DNA, and inserting into the egg the DNA-filled nucleus from a cell of the horse to be cloned. Once the DNA is transferred into the egg, the egg is stimulated to begin dividing in a culture dish in a laboratory until it becomes an embryo developed enough to survive in a mare's uterus. The embryo is then transferred into a recipient mare using the typical embryo transfer process.

 

Nowadays the application of new technologies gets the gene editing in horses may allow the generation of improved sportive individuals. CRISPR/Cas9 is a method to edit the horse genome to obtain desire characteristics in one generation of horses in an non random way like the manipulation of the myostatin gene, a negative regulator of muscle mass development.

The First equine cloned was the mule calle Idaho Gem created by Gordon Woods and his team at the University of Idaho on 4 May 2003.

 

The same year, on 28 May 2003, was born a Female foal named Prometea cloned in The Laboratory of Reproductive Technologies in Cremona, Italy. (Team leader;Cesare Galli)

 

From then one horses han been cloning multiplying valuable individuals mainly because of commercial and sport interests, but too there some scientific projects to recover some old wild horse species.

        
-The most famous player of Polo, Adolofo Cambiaso, has created a team winner with cloned horses.

        
-Researchers clone the last wild equine, a Prezwalski horse.

        
-Scientists in Russia are preparing to clone a 42,000-year-old horse. The perfectly preserved baby horse was discovered last year in the Batagaika Crater in eastern Siberia.