Italian Stallion Cloned From Sterile Champion Race Horse
Related News: Cloning NewsScientists in Italy are reporting that they have created their second cloned horse. This latest clone entry is an Italian stallion that is the first ever produced from a sterile race champion.
The cloned foal was born on February 25 weighing 42 kg and "is in excellent health", the scientists stated.
This horse is a clone of the hore know as Pieraz. Pieraz was a champion race horse and Arabian breed that won the world endurance race championship back in 1994 and 1996. Pieraz is now retired and in a stable in the US....
Scientists classified the birth as a breakthrough that paves the way for preserving the lines of the best race horses by creating clones that can breed.
Scientists are calling this birth a breakthrough in reproductive medicine. This latest procedure paves the way for preserving the lines of the best race horses by creating clones that are no longer sterile and can breed.
"This new approach opens the possibility of conserving the genetic inheritance of exceptional horses whose genetic heritage gets lost because they are castrated," the lab said in a statement on Thursday.
Cesare Galli, director of the Laboratory of Reproductive Technology in Cremona in northern Italy, said in certain horse racing disciplines horses often are castrated when they are 3 years old to make them easier to train.
The cloned foal, known as Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion, was created at Galli's lab using DNA derived from skin cells taken from the former champion. The same technique was used to create the new foal that was used to make Dolly the sheep.
Dolly however was euthanised two years ago after she contracted a common livestock disease and further, her cells showed signs of premature ageing....
Posted on April 18, 2005 02:15 PM