(This article is from Pedigree Consultants website, author Byron Rogers – more from Pedigree Consultants here.)
We would like to think that we are on the forefront of most things regarding thoroughbred pedigrees, and we were really glad that we were able to organize the Genetics and Pedigree Symposium earlier this year. We think that genetics and geneticists are going to play a big part in augmenting current pedigree analysis in years to come so we are very interested in some more recent publications that start to link certain genes towards elite performance in the thoroughbred.
The “speed gene”, launched by Equinome earlier this year was to be on reflection just the tip of the iceberg as it didn’t really differentiate between good and bad, rather it just told you what distance your horse was going to be best at. One of these latest studies confirms the MSTN (myostatin) gene (also known as the “speed gene”) as an important one for distance in the thoroughbred while another two start to look at separating out the elites from the average…..enjoy.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2052.2010.02126.x/pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2052.2010.02095.x/pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2052.2010.02104.x/pdf
