Bioinformatics in horses involves the application of computational tools and techniques to analyze and interpret biological data related to equine species. This interdisciplinary field integrates biology, computer science, and information technology to study genetic, genomic, and proteomic information in horses. Bioinformatics can be used to investigate genetic variations, understand disease mechanisms, and assist in the development of targeted therapies and breeding programs. Key areas of focus include genome sequencing, gene expression analysis, and the identification of genetic markers associated with specific traits or conditions. This page compiles peer-reviewed research studies and scholarly articles that explore the application and impact of bioinformatics on equine genetics, health, and breeding.
Moran CJ, Ramesh A, Brama PA, O'Byrne JM, O'Brien FJ, Levingstone TJ.Much research is currently ongoing into new therapies for cartilage defect repair with new biomaterials frequently appearing which purport to have significant regenerative capacity. These biomaterials may be classified as medical devices, and as such must undergo rigorous testing before they are implanted in humans. A large part of this testing involves in vitro trials and biomechanical testing. However, in order to bridge the gap between the lab and the clinic, in vivo preclinical trials are required, and usually demanded by regulatory approval bodies. This review examines the in vivo models ...
Lee S, Hwang S, Yu HJ, Oh D, Choi YJ, Kim MC, Kim Y, Ryu DY.MicroRNAs (miRNAs) in blood plasma are stable under high levels of ribonuclease activity and could function in tissue-to-tissue communication, suggesting that they may have distinctive structural characteristics compared with non-circulating miRNAs. In this study, the expression of miRNAs in horse plasma and their characteristic nucleotide composition were examined and compared with non-plasma miRNAs. Highly expressed plasma miRNA species were not part of the abundant group of miRNAs in non-plasma tissues, except for the eca-let-7 family. eca-miR-486-5p, -92a, and -21 were among the most abund...
Ambrisko TD, Schramel JP, Adler A, Kutasi O, Makra Z, Moens YP.The aim was to evaluate the feasibility of using electrical impedance tomography (EIT) in horses. Thoracic EIT was used in nine horses. Thoracic and abdominal circumference changes were also measured with respiratory ultrasound plethysmography (RUP). Data were recorded during baseline, rebreathing of CO2 and sedation. Three breaths were selected for analysis from each recording. During baseline breathing, horses regularly took single large breaths (sighs), which were also analysed. Functional EIT images were created using standard deviations (SD) of pixel signals and correlation coefficients (...
Imsland F, McGowan K, Rubin CJ, Henegar C, Sundström E, Berglund J, Schwochow D, Gustafson U, Imsland P, Lindblad-Toh K, Lindgren G, Mikko S....Dun is a wild-type coat color in horses characterized by pigment dilution with a striking pattern of dark areas termed primitive markings. Here we show that pigment dilution in Dun horses is due to radially asymmetric deposition of pigment in the growing hair caused by localized expression of the T-box 3 (TBX3) transcription factor in hair follicles, which in turn determines the distribution of hair follicle melanocytes. Most domestic horses are non-dun, a more intensely pigmented phenotype caused by regulatory mutations impairing TBX3 expression in the hair follicle, resulting in a more circu...
Guo X, Pei J, Chu M, Wu X, Bao P, Ding X, Liang C, Yan P.The complete mitochondrial genome of Hequ horse was determined in this study. The mitogenome is 16 656 bp in length and contains 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, and a D-loop region. The overall base composition of the H-strand is 32.20% for A, 28.55% for C, 13.38% for G and 25.86% for T. Tree constructed using MEGA 6 with Maximum-likelihood (ML) methods demonstrated that Hequ horse was clustered in subfamily Equidae.
Cieslak J, Pawlak P, Wodas L, Borowska A, Stachowiak A, Puppel K, Kuczynska B, Luczak M, Marczak L, Mackowski M.Currently, research interest is increasing in horse milk composition and its effect on human health. Despite previously published studies describing the presence of intra- and interbreed variability of equine milk components, no investigations have focused on the genetic background of this variation. Among horse caseins and the genes encoding them, least is known about the structure and expression of the α-S2 casein gene, CSN1S2. Herein, based on direct sequencing of the equine CSN1S2 coding sequence, we describe the presence of 51-bp insertion-deletion (in/del) polymorphism, which significan...
Lombana KG, Goodrich LR, Phillips JN, Kisiday JD, Ruple-Czerniak A, McIlwraith CW.Diseases of the musculoskeletal system are a major cause of loss of use and retirement in sport horses. The use of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMDMSCs) for healing of traumatized tissue has gained substantial favor in clinical settings and can assist healing and tissue regeneration in orthopedic injuries. There are two common sites of harvest of BMDMSCs, the sternum and the ilium. Our objective was to determine if any differences exist in BMDMSCs acquired from the sternum and the ilium. We compared the two harvest sites in their propensity to undergo multilineage differentiatio...
Jensen-Jarolim E, Pacios LF, Bianchini R, Hofstetter G, Roth-Walter F.Owners and their domestic animals via skin shedding and secretions, mutually exchange microbiomes, potential pathogens and innate immune molecules. Among the latter especially lipocalins are multifaceted: they may have an immunomodulatory function and, furthermore, they represent one of the most important animal allergen families. The amino acid identities, as well as their structures by superposition modeling were compared among human lipocalins, hLCN1 and hLCN2, and most important animal lipocalin allergens, such as Can f 1, Can f 2 and Can f 4 from dog, Fel d 4 from cats, Bos d 5 from cow's...
Gao W, Chan Y, You M, Lacap-Bugler DC, Leung WK, Watt RM.This study explored the range of bacterial taxa present within healthy subgingival (below the gum-line) niches in the horse oral cavity using 16S rRNA gene amplicon pyrosequencing. Pooled subgingival plaque samples were collected from approximately 200 sulcus sites from two horses (EQ1, EQ2) for analysis. A total of 14,260 quality-filtered pyrosequencing reads were obtained, which were assigned to 3875 operational taxonomic units (OTUs; 99% identity cut-off); 1907 OTUs for EQ1 and 2156 OTUs for EQ2. Diverse taxa from 12 phyla were identified, including Actinobacteria (3.17%), Bacteroidetes (25...
Ząbek T, Semik E, Szmatoła T, Oklejewicz B, Fornal A, Bugno-Poniewierska M.Methylation profiles across three CpG islands of the RNASEL gene were determined in blood leukocyte samples of Anglo-Arabian and Hucul horses. Bisulfite sequencing revealed hypomethylated state of the RNASEL promoter coinciding with methylated CpG island placed inside the gene. Several CpG sites were identified for which the methylation state was influenced by DNA polymorphism. Two of them showed monoallelic methylation. One of the CpG sites revealed functional polymorphism. A number of partially methylated CpG sites have been observed in the promoter area of RNASEL, which were used for the co...
Lanata A, Guidi A, Baragli P, Valenza G, Scilingo EP.This study reports on a novel method to detect and reduce the contribution of movement artifact (MA) in electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings gathered from horses in free movement conditions. We propose a model that integrates cardiovascular and movement information to estimate the MA contribution. Specifically, ECG and physical activity are continuously acquired from seven horses through a wearable system. Such a system employs completely integrated textile electrodes to monitor ECG and is also equipped with a triaxial accelerometer for movement monitoring. In the literature, the most used techn...
Scruggs JL, Flatland B, McCormick KA, Reed A.To assess the utility of population-based reference intervals (PRIs) for interpreting thromboelastography (TEG) variables in horses using biological variation data. Methods: Prospective cohort biologic variation study conducted over a 5-week period. Methods: Veterinary teaching hospital and research facility. Methods: Ten clinically healthy horses randomly selected from a veterinary school research and teaching herd. Methods: Horse health was determined using physical examination, CBC, and biochemical and coagulation profiles prior to the start of the study. Subsequently, once weekly blood sam...
Frischknecht M, Jagannathan V, Plattet P, Neuditschko M, Signer-Hasler H, Bachmann I, Pacholewska A, Drögemüller C, Dietschi E, Flury C, Rieder S....The identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL) such as height and their underlying causative variants is still challenging and often requires large sample sizes. In humans hundreds of loci with small effects control the heritable portion of height variability. In domestic animals, typically only a few loci with comparatively large effects explain a major fraction of the heritability. We investigated height at withers in Shetland ponies and mapped a QTL to ECA 6 by genome-wide association (GWAS) using a small cohort of only 48 animals and the Illumina equine SNP70 BeadChip. Fine-mapping re...
Corado CR, McKemie DS, Young A, Knych HK.Metabolism is an essential factor in the clearance of many drugs and as such plays a major role in the establishment of dosage regimens and withdrawal times. CYP2D6, the human orthologue to equine CYP2D50, is a drug-metabolizing enzyme that is highly polymorphic in humans leading to widely differing levels of metabolic activity. As CYP2D6 is highly polymorphic, in this study it was hypothesized that the gene coding for the equine orthologue, CYP2D50, may also be prone to polymorphism. Blood samples were collected from 150 horses, the CYP2D50 gene was cloned and sequenced; and full-length seque...
Cieslak J, Mackowski M, Czyzak-Runowska G, Wojtowski J, Puppel K, Kuczynska B, Pawlak P.Apart from the well-known role of somatic cell count as a parameter reflecting the inflammatory status of the mammary gland, the composition of cells isolated from milk is considered as a valuable material for gene expression studies in mammals. Due to its unique composition, in recent years an increasing interest in mare's milk consumption has been observed. Thus, investigating the genetic background of horse's milk variability presents and interesting study model. Relying on 39 milk samples collected from mares representing three breeds (Polish Primitive Horse, Polish Cold-blooded Horse, Pol...
Holl HM, Gao S, Fei Z, Andrews C, Brooks SA.Laminitis, the structural failure of interdigitated tissue that suspends the distal skeleton within the hoof capsule, is a devastating disease that is the second leading cause of both lameness and euthanasia in the horse. Current transcriptomic research focuses on the expression of known genes. However, as this tissue is quite unique and equine gene annotation is largely derived from computational predictions, there are likely yet uncharacterized transcripts that may be involved in the etiology of laminitis. In order to create a novel annotation resource, we performed whole transcriptome seque...
Kumar J, Chaudhury A, Bera BC, Kumar R, Kumar R, Tatu U, Yadav SC.The present immuno-diagnostic method using soluble antigens from whole cell lysate antigen for trypanosomosis have certain inherent problems like lack of standardized and reproducible antigens, as well as ethical issues due to in vivo production, that could be alleviated by in vitro production. In the present study we have identified heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) from T. evansi proteome. The nucleotide sequence of T. evansi HSP70 was 2116 bp, which encodes 690 amino acid residues. The phylogenetic analysis of T. evansi HSP70 showed that T. evansi occurred within Trypanosoma clade and is most c...
Wijnberg ID, Franssen H.This review discusses the scope of using (quantitative) electromyography (EMG) in diagnosing myopathies and neuropathies in equine patients. In human medicine, many EMG methods are available for the diagnosis, pathophysiological description and evaluation, monitoring, or rehabilitation of patients, and some of these techniques have also been applied to horses. EMG results are usually combined with other neurophysiological data, ultrasound, histochemistry, biochemistry of muscle biopsies, and clinical signs in order to provide a complete picture of the condition and its clinical course. EMG tec...
Lotstra RJ, van den Broek J, Power T, Marr CM, Wijnberg ID.Atrial fibrillation is a common equine arrhythmia. Quinidine alone, or with digoxin are common treatments. Studies on outcome in Warmblood populations in which duration of the AF is often unknown are limited. Objective: To identify the factors that are associated with the success of full treatment cardioversion with oral medication, and establish whether there are differences in these factors between institutions. Methods: Retrospective case series using patient records of Equine University Clinic of Utrecht University and Rossdales Equine Hospital, Newmarket. Methods: Forty-nine horses treate...
Mini-myoglobin (mini-HHMb) is a fragment of horse-heart myoglobin (HHMb) considered to be the prototype of the product encoded by the central exon of the HHMb gene. For this reason, mini-HHMb has been studied extensively showing that carbonylation and oxygenation properties of the ferrous form are similar to those of the full-length protein, while kinetics and thermodynamics of azide binding to the ferric form are significantly different from those of HHMb. To analyze the structure-function relationships in mini-HHMb and the role of conformational fluctuations in ligand accessibility, the mole...
Moon S, Lee JW, Shin D, Shin KY, Kim J, Choi IY, Kim J, Kim H.Using next-generation sequencing, we conducted a genome-wide scan of selective sweeps associated with selection toward genetic improvement in Thoroughbreds. We investigated potential phenotypic consequence of putative candidate loci by candidate gene association mapping for the finishing time in 240 Thoroughbred horses. We found a significant association with the trait for Ral GApase alpha 2 (RALGAP2) that regulates a variety of cellular processes of signal trafficking. Neighboring genes around RALGAP2 included insulinoma-associated 1 (INSM1), pallid (PLDN), and Ras and Rab interactor 2 (RIN2)...
Pretorius A, Faber FE, van Kleef M.Development of African horsesickness (AHS) subunit vaccines will have to include a rational approach that uses knowledge of how the virus interacts with the host immune system. The global in vivo immune response induced by attenuated AHSV serotype 4 in horses was characterised using transcriptome sequencing. PBMC were collected with 24h intervals for four days after inoculation and four days after a second boost, 21 days later. Transcriptome data were normalised to the day 0 naïve transcriptome and up- or down-regulated immune genes identified using the CLC workbench. Peak expression was obse...
Pacholewska A, Jagannathan V, Drögemüller M, Klukowska-Rötzler J, Lanz S, Hamza E, Dermitzakis ET, Marti E, Leeb T, Gerber V.Recurrent airway obstruction (RAO) is a common and potentially debilitating lower airway disease in horses, which shares many similarities with human asthma. In susceptible horses RAO exacerbation is caused by environmental allergens and irritants present in hay dust. The objective of this study was the identification of genes and pathways involved in the pathology of RAO by global transcriptome analyses in stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). We performed RNA-seq on PBMCs derived from 40 RAO affected and 45 control horses belonging to three cohorts of Warmblood horses: two h...
Schroeder DI, Jayashankar K, Douglas KC, Thirkill TL, York D, Dickinson PJ, Williams LE, Samollow PB, Ross PJ, Bannasch DL, Douglas GC, LaSalle JM.Over the last 20-80 million years the mammalian placenta has taken on a variety of morphologies through both divergent and convergent evolution. Recently we have shown that the human placenta genome has a unique epigenetic pattern of large partially methylated domains (PMDs) and highly methylated domains (HMDs) with gene body DNA methylation positively correlating with level of gene expression. In order to determine the evolutionary conservation of DNA methylation patterns and transcriptional regulatory programs in the placenta, we performed a genome-wide methylome (MethylC-seq) analysis of hu...
Rückert C, Kriete M, Jaenicke S, Winkler A, Tauch A.The complete genome sequence of the type strain Corynebacterium uterequi DSM 45634 from an equine urogenital tract specimen comprises 2,419,437 bp and 2,163 protein-coding genes. Candidate virulence factors are homologs of DIP0733, DIP1281, and DIP1621 from Corynebacterium diphtheriae and of sialidase precursors from Trueperella pyogenes and Chlamydia trachomatis.
Doud MB, Ashenberg O, Bloom JD.Evolution drives changes in a protein's sequence over time. The extent to which these changes in sequence lead to shifts in the underlying preference for each amino acid at each site is an important question with implications for comparative sequence-analysis methods, such as molecular phylogenetics. To quantify the extent that site-specific amino acid preferences shift during evolution, we performed deep mutational scanning on two homologs of human influenza nucleoprotein with 94% amino acid identity. We found that only a modest fraction of sites exhibited shifts in amino acid preferences tha...
Walther S, Rusitzka TV, Diesterbeck US, Czerny CP.Our understanding of how equine immunoglobulin genes are organized has increased significantly in recent years. For equine heavy chains, 52 IGHV, 40 IGHD, 8 IGHJ and 11 IGHC are present. Seven of these IGHCs are gamma chain genes. Sequence diversity is increasing between fetal, neonatal, foal and adult age. The kappa light chain contains 60 IGKV, 5 IGKJ and 1 IGKC, whereas there are 144 IGLV, 7 IGLJ, and 7 IGLC for the lambda light chain, which is expressed predominantly in horses. Significant transcriptional differences for IGLV and IGLC are identified in different breeds. Allotypic and allel...
Xie FY, Feng YL, Wang HH, Ma YF, Yang Y, Wang YC, Shen W, Pan QJ, Yin S, Sun YJ, Ma JY.Prior to the mechanization of agriculture and labor-intensive tasks, humans used donkeys (Equus africanus asinus) for farm work and packing. However, as mechanization increased, donkeys have been increasingly raised for meat, milk, and fur in China. To maintain the development of the donkey industry, breeding programs should focus on traits related to these new uses. Compared to conventional marker-assisted breeding plans, genome- and transcriptome-based selection methods are more efficient and effective. To analyze the coding genes of the donkey genome, we assembled the transcriptome of donke...
Bowling AT, Stott ML, Bickel L.Microsatellite DNA markers in a mare's hair bulbs not concordant with markers in her blood confirmed the hypothesis of chimaerism which had been proposed to explain the apparent parentage exclusion of the mare from her suckling foal. Parentage analysis for this foal based on genetic markers not originating from blood cells of its dam supported a parentage verification conclusion.
Jakobsen JR, Schjerling P, Svensson RB, Buhl R, Carstensen H, Koch M, Krogsgaard MR, Kjær M, Mackey AL.The myotendinous junction (MTJ) is a specialized interface for transmitting high forces between the muscle and tendon and yet the MTJ is a common site of strain injury with a high recurrence rate. The aim of this study was to identify previously unknown MTJ components in mature animals and humans. Samples were obtained from the superficial digital flexor (SDF) muscle-tendon interface of 20 horses, and the tissue was separated through a sequential cryosectioning approach into muscle, MTJ (muscle tissue enriched in myofiber tips attached to the tendon), and tendon fractions. RT-PCR was performed...
Ning T, Li J, Lin K, Xiao H, Wylie S, Hua S, Li H, Zhang YP.The domestic horse is the most widely used and important stock and recreational animal, valued for its strength and endurance. The energy required by the domestic horse is mainly supplied by mitochondria via oxidative phosphorylation. Thus, selection may have played an essential role in the evolution of the horse mitochondria. Besides, demographic events also affect the DNA polymorphic pattern on mitochondria. To understand the evolutionary patterns of the mitochondria of the domestic horse, we used a deep sequencing approach to obtain the complete sequences of 15 mitochondrial genomes, and fo...
Yue XP, Qin F, Campana MG, Liu DH, Mao CC, Wang XB, Lan XY, Chen H, Lei CZ.Previous mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) D-loop and microsatellite studies have shown that Chinese horses have multiple maternal origins and high genetic diversity. To better characterize maternal genetic origins and diversity of Chinese domestic horses, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of 407 complete 1140 bp sequences of the horse mitochondrially encoded cytochrome b (CYTB) gene, including 323 horses from 13 Chinese indigenous breeds and 84 reference sequences from GenBank. A total of 114 haplotypes were identified, of which 73 appeared among the 13 Chinese horse breeds. The high mitochondria...
Marletta D, Tupac-Yupanqui I, Bordonaro S, García D, Guastella AM, Criscione A, Cañón J, Dunner S.The distribution of genetic diversity and the genetic relationships among western Mediterranean horse breeds were investigated using microsatellite markers. The examined sample included seven Spanish and three Italian local horse breeds and populations, plus a Spanish Thoroughbred outgroup. The total number of animals examined was 682 (on average 62 animals per breed; range 20-122). The microsatellite marker set analysed provided 128 alleles (10.7 alleles per locus). Within-breed genetic diversity was always high (>0.70), with breeds contributing about 8% of the total genetic variability. T...
López-Plana C, Sautet JY, Pons J, Navarro G.Quantitative measurements were made on cross-sectional preparations of the distal part of the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) from nine young mixed-breed horses to establish reference values for the total number of myelinated fibres, mean fibre diameter and percentage of thickest fibres (over 9.5 microns) and to delineate diameter distribution curves. The total number of myelinated fibres, mean fibre diameter and percentage of thickest fibres for the left RLN were significantly lower than those of the right RLN (P < 0.005). The distribution of fibres was unimodal. The fibre diameter ranged ...
Cwiklinski K, Merga JY, Lake SL, Hartley C, Matthews JB, Paterson S, Hodgkinson JE.Clade V nematodes comprise several parasitic species that include the cyathostomins, primary helminth pathogens of horses. Next generation transcriptome datasets are available for eight parasitic clade V nematodes, although no equine parasites are included in this group. Here, we report next generation transcriptome sequencing analysis for the common cyathostomin species, Cylicostephanus goldi. A cDNA library was generated from RNA extracted from 17 C. goldi male and female adult parasites. Following sequencing using a 454 GS FLX pyrosequencer, a total of 475,215 sequencing reads were generate...
Lee EJ, Raudsepp T, Kata SR, Adelson D, Womack JE, Skow LC, Chowdhary BP.Comparative genomics has served as a backbone for the rapid development of gene maps in domesticated animals. The integration of this approach with radiation hybrid (RH) analysis provides one of the most direct ways to obtain physically ordered comparative maps across evolutionarily diverged species. We herein report the development of a detailed RH and comparative map for horse chromosome 17 (ECA17). With markers distributed at an average interval of every 1.4 Mb, the map is currently the most informative among the equine chromosomes. It comprises 75 markers (56 genes and 19 microsatellites),...
Shinjyo S, Abe H, Masuda M.The carbohydrate composition of horse spleen ferritin was studied. 1 mol of the apoferritin, the protein moiety of ferritin, contains 25 mol of hexose, 3 mol of hexosamine and 10 mol of fucose. Same carbohydrate composition was detected in the apoferritin from iron rich ferritins. These results indicate that horse spleen ferritin is composed of non-identical subunits as regards its carbohydrate composition.
Locke MM, Ruth LS, Millon LV, Penedo MC, Murray JD, Bowling AT.The colour locus historically referred to as C in the horse is linked to microsatellites markers on horse chromosome 21. Preliminary results demonstrated linkage of Ccr, thought to be the cream dilution variant of the C locus, to HTG10. An analysis of horse chromosome 21 using additional families confirmed and established a group of markers linked to Ccr. This work also improved the resolution of previously reported linkage maps for this chromosome. Linkage analysis unambiguously produced the map order: SGCV16-(19.1 cM)-HTG10-(3.8 cM)-LEX60/COR73-(1.3 cM)-COR68-(4.5 cM)- Ccr-(11.9 cM)-LEX31. C...
Tozaki T, Ohnuma A, Kikuchi M, Ishige T, Kakoi H, Hirota KI, Kusano K, Nagata SI.Gene doping is a threat to fair competition in sports, both human and equestrian. One method of gene doping is to administer exogenous genetic materials, called transgenes, into the bodies of postnatal humans and horses. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based transgene detection methods such as digital PCR and real-time PCR have been developed for gene doping testing in humans and horses. However, the significance of PCR inhibitors in gene doping testing has not been well evaluated. In this study, we evaluated the effects of PCR inhibitors on transgene detection using digital PCR and real-time ...
Ren X, Liu Y, Zhao Y, Li B, Bai D, Bou G, Zhang X, Du M, Wang X, Bou T, Shen Y, Dugarjaviin M.Interspecific hybridization often shows negative effects on hybrids. However, only a few multicellular species, limited to a handful of plants and animals, have shown partial genetic mechanisms by which hybridization leads to low fitness in hybrids. Here, to explore the outcome of combining the two genomes of a horse and donkey, we analyzed the whole-genome sequences from an parent-offspring trio using Illumina platforms. We generated 41.39× and 46.21× coverage sequences for the horse and mule, respectively. For the donkey, a 40.38× coverage sequence was generated and stored in our laborat...
Kim DS, Kim DW, Kim MY, Nam SH, Choi SH, Kim RN, Kang A, Kim A, Park HS.A conjoined gene is defined as one formed at the time of transcription by combining at least part of one exon from each of two or more distinct genes that lie on the same chromosome, in the same or opposite orientation, which translate independently into different proteins. We comparatively studied the extent of conjoined genes in thirteen genomes by analyzing the public databases of expressed sequence tags and mRNA sequences using a set of computational tools designed to identify conjoined genes on the same DNA strand or opposite DNA strands of the same genomic locus. The CACG database, avail...
Forro M, Cieslar S, Ecker GL, Walzak A, Hahn J, Lindinger MI.The purposes of this study were 1) to determine the compartmentation of body water in horses by using indicator dilution techniques and 2) to simultaneously measure bioelectrical impedance to current flow at impulse current frequencies of 5 and 200 kHz to formulate predictive equations that could be used to estimate total body water (TBW), extracellular fluid volume (ECFV), and intracellular fluid volume (ICFV). Eight horses and ponies weighing from 214 to 636 kg had catheters placed into the left and right jugular veins. Deuterium oxide, sodium thiocyanate, and Evans blue were infused for the...
León B, Jiménez-Sánchez C, Retamosa-Izaguirre M.Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) is an arbovirus transmitted by arthropods, widely distributed in the Americas that, depending on the subtype, can produce outbreaks or yearly cases of encephalitis in horses and humans. The symptoms are similar to those caused by dengue virus and in the worst-case scenario, involve encephalitis, and death. MaxEnt is software that uses climatological, geographical, and occurrence data of a particular species to create a model to estimate possible niches that could have these favorable conditions. We used MaxEnt with a total of 188 registers of VEEV pr...
Asadollahpour Nanaei H, Ayatollahi Mehrgardi A, Esmailizadeh A.Equine athletes have a genetic heritage that has been evolved for millions of years, which provides an opportunity to study the genetics of locomotion pattern and performance in mammals. The Hanoverian, a breed originating in Germany, is arguably among the most athletic of horse breeds, as well as possessing a balanced character and beautiful appearance. Here, we compared the whole genomes of Hanoverian with three other horse breeds (Akhal-Teke, Franches-Montagnes, and Standardbred), using the fixation index (Fst) and cross-population composite likelihood ratio (XP-CLR) methods for testing the...
Vukojević V, Bowen AM, Wilhelm K, Ming Y, Ce Z, Schleucher J, Hore PJ, Terenius L, Morozova-Roche LA.Recent evidence supports the idea that early aggregates, protein, and lipoprotein oligomers but not large aggregates like fibrils that are formed at late stages of the aggregation process are responsible for cytotoxicity. Oligomers can interact with the cellular plasma membrane affecting its structure and/or dynamics or may be taken up by the cells. In either case, disparate cascades of molecular interactions are activated in the attempt to counteract the disturbance induced by the oligomers. If unsuccessful, cell death follows. Here, we study the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying P...
Chapuis RJJ, Becker AAMJ, Dowling PM, Weese JS.Antimicrobial-associated diarrhoea is a common adverse effect of antimicrobial treatment in horses and has been reported following the administration of oral doxycycline. The administration of antimicrobials has also been associated with changes in the equine intestinal microbiota diversity yet has not been explored under doxycycline treatment. Objective: To describe the dynamics of the faecal microbial diversity following a 5-day oral administration of doxycycline in healthy horses with Streptococcus zooepidemicus infected tissue chambers. Methods: Experimental prospective cohort study in a s...
Mizuno K, Nagatani Y, Yamashita K, Matsukawa M.Ultrasound propagation in cancellous bone (porous media) under the condition of closed pore boundaries was investigated. A cancellous bone and two plate-like cortical bones obtained from a racehorse were prepared. A water-immersion ultrasound technique in the MHz range and a three-dimensional elastic finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method were used to investigate the waves. The experiments and simulations showed a clear separation of the incident longitudinal wave into fast and slow waves. The findings advance the evaluation of bones based on the two-wave phenomenon for in vivo assessment...
Ellegren H, Andersson L, Johansson M, Sandberg K.A synthetic polynucleotide (TG)n was hybridized to equine DNA digested with HinfI and hypervariable hybridization patterns were obtained. Mendelian inheritance of these DNA fingerprinting patterns was confirmed by pedigree analysis. Estimates of the probabilities of identical band patterns in unrelated individuals of different breeds (Swedish Trotters, North Swedish Trotters, Thoroughbreds and Arabians) were in the range 1 x 10(-4) - 7 x 10(-6). The variability derived with the (TG)n probe in horses was higher than what we obtained with several other commonly used probes for DNA fingerprinting...
Díaz S, Giovambattista G, Dulout FN, Peral-García P.Genetic variation in the equine leucocyte antigen-DRB (ELA-DRB) second exon was investigated using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification, restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of PCR products (PCR-RFLP) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequencing. Eight distinct PCR-RFLP patterns could be identified in the studied Argentine Creole (AC) horses. The number of observed patterns per individual ranged from four to six, thus confirming the presence of multiple DRB copies in AC horses. Three PCR-RFLP alleles and three new sequences were identified. The estimated rates of synonymous a...
Zabek T, Nogaj A, Radko A, Nogaj J, Słota E.Genetic variation of endangered Biłgoraj horses and two common Polish horse breeds was compared with the use of 12 microsatellite loci (AHT4, AHT5, ASB2, HMS2, HMS3, HMS6, HMS7, HTG4, HTG6, HTG7, HTG10, VHL20). Lower allelic diversity was detected in all investigated populations in comparison to other studies. Large differences in the frequencies of microsatellite alleles between Biłgoraj horses and two other horse breeds were discovered. In all polymorphic loci all investigated breeds were in the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Mean Fis values and the results of a test for the presence of a rec...
Galera PD, Ribeiro CR, Sapp HL, Coleman J, Fontes W, Brooks DE.Human amniotic membrane (AM) has been used as a biomaterial for surgical wound skin and ocular surface reconstruction for several years. Currently, equine AM has been used for corneal reconstruction in several animal species, and appears to have the same properties as human AM. Despite the observed positive healing abilities of this tissue in horses with ulcerative keratitis the proteins of equine AM have not been described. Objective: To identify proteins known to be associated with corneal healing from frozen equine AM. Methods: Placentas were acquired from healthy live foal births from a lo...
Scott EY, Penedo MCT, Murray JD, Finno CJ.Equine cerebellar abiotrophy (CA) is a hereditary neurodegenerative disease that affects the Purkinje neurons of the cerebellum and causes ataxia in Arabian foals. Signs of CA are typically first recognized either at birth to any time up to 6 months of age. CA is inherited as an autosomal recessive trait and is associated with a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) on equine chromosome 2 (13074277G>A), located in the fourth exon of TOE1 and in proximity to MUTYH on the antisense strand. We hypothesize that unraveling the functional consequences of the CA SNP using RNA-seq will elucidate the m...
Clegg JB, Goodbourn SE, Braend M.The equine alpha globin gene complex comprises two functional alpha genes and an alpha-like pseudogene arranged in the order 5'-alpha 2-(5kb)-alpha 1-(3kb)-psi alpha-3'. A single (embryonic) zeta-like sequence lies within a 12 kb region 5' to the alpha 2 gene. We have determined the sequence of the alpha 1 gene of the BII haplotype, one of two most common haplotypes (the other being BI) which encode alpha globins with either Tyr (BI) or Phe (BII) at codon 24 in both linked alpha genes. In BI and BII the non-allelic alpha 2 and alpha 1 genes respectively code for Gln or Lys at codon 60, thus ac...
Batcher K, Varney S, Raudsepp T, Jevit M, Dickinson P, Jagannathan V, Leeb T, Bannasch D.LINE-1 is an active transposable element encoding proteins capable of inserting host gene retrocopies, resulting in retro-copy number variants (retroCNVs) between individuals. Here, we performed retroCNV discovery using 86 equids and identified 437 retrocopy insertions. Only 5 retroCNVs were shared between horses and other equids, indicating that the majority of retroCNVs inserted after the species diverged. A large number (17-35 copies) of segmentally duplicated Ligand Dependent Nuclear Receptor Corepressor Like (LCORL) retrocopies were present in all equids but absent from other extant peris...
Issouf M, Vargas A, Boivin R, Lavoie JP.Airway wall remodeling, including hyperplasia and hypertrophy of smooth muscle (ASM) cells leading to an increased smooth muscle mass, is considered central to asthma. However, molecular pathways responsible for ASM remodeling remain poorly understood. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as key regulators of inflammatory and repair processes affecting the lungs and can downregulate protein expression by inhibiting target mRNA translation. We therefore hypothesized that miRNAs are involved in ASM remodeling in asthma by modulating ASM proliferation. We have analyzed the expression of miRNAs in bron...
