DNA in horses refers to the genetic material that carries the hereditary information necessary for the growth, development, functioning, and reproduction of equine species. It consists of sequences of nucleotides that encode the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of horses. DNA analysis in horses can provide insights into genetic diversity, lineage, and breed characteristics. It is also utilized in identifying genetic disorders, understanding hereditary traits, and assisting in selective breeding programs. This page compiles peer-reviewed research studies and scholarly articles that explore the structure, function, and applications of DNA analysis in equine genetics and breeding.
Wolfsberger WW, Ayala NM, Castro-Marquez SO, Irizarry-Negron VM, Potapchuk A, Shchubelka K, Potish L, Majeske AJ, Oliver LF, Lameiro AD....Since the first Spanish settlers brought horses to America centuries ago, several local varieties and breeds have been established in the New World. These were generally a consequence of the admixture of the different breeds arriving from Europe. In some instances, local horses have been selectively bred for specific traits, such as appearance, endurance, strength, and gait. We looked at the genetics of two breeds, the Puerto Rican Non-Purebred (PRNPB) (also known as the "Criollo") horses and the Puerto Rican Paso Fino (PRPF), from the Caribbean Island of Puerto Rico. While it is reasonable ...
Horvath S, Haghani A, Peng S, Hales EN, Zoller JA, Raj K, Larison B, Robeck TR, Petersen JL, Bellone RR, Finno CJ.Cytosine methylation patterns have not yet been thoroughly studied in horses. Here, we profile n = 333 samples from 42 horse tissue types at loci that are highly conserved between mammalian species using a custom array (HorvathMammalMethylChip40). Using the blood and liver tissues from horses, we develop five epigenetic aging clocks: a multi-tissue clock, a blood clock, a liver clock and two dual-species clocks that apply to both horses and humans. In addition, using blood methylation data from three additional equid species (plains zebra, Grevy's zebras and Somali asses), we develop anoth...
Bergmann W, de Lest CV, Plomp S, Vernooij JCM, Wijnberg ID, Back W, Gröne A, Delany MW, Caliskan N, Tryfonidou MA, Grinwis GCM.Gross morphology of healthy and degenerated intervertebral discs (IVDs) is largely similar in horses as in dogs and humans. For further comparison, the biochemical composition and the histological and biochemical changes with age and degeneration were analyzed in 41 warmblood horses. From 33 horses, 139 discs and 2 fetal vertebral columns were evaluated and scored histologically. From 13 horses, 73 IVDs were assessed for hydration, DNA, glycosaminoglycans, total collagen, hydroxyl-lysyl-pyridinoline, hydroxylysine, and advanced glycation end-product (AGE) content. From 7 horses, 20 discs were ...
Abdullah HHAM, Aboelsoued D, Farag TK, Abdel-Shafy S, Abdel Megeed KN, Parola P, Raoult D, Mediannikov O.Equine vector-borne diseases (EVBDs) are emerging and re-emerging diseases, and most of them are zoonotic. This study aimed to investigate EVBDs in equines and associated arthropods (ticks and flies) from Egypt using molecular analyses, in addition to a preliminary characterization of associated ticks and flies by the matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight (MALDI-TOF) and molecular techniques. In this study, 335 blood samples were obtained from equines that appeared to be in good health (320 horses and 15 donkeys) in Cairo and Beni Suef provinces, Egypt. From the same anima...
Vdovina NV, Yuryeva IB.Mezenskaya horse (Mezenka) is Russia's aboriginal breed. It is a domestic selection in the northern territories of Arkhangelsk region. The breed is perfectly adapted to the conditions of the Far North, and has a number of valuable economic and biological qualities. At present, it has a limited gene pool and is bred only in the Mezensky district, where one gene pool-breeding farm is operating and so is a number of basic farms, where selection and breeding activities take place with the breed. Due to a small population of Mezen horses, the challenge of preserving its intra-breed diversity is ver...
Esdaile E, Kallenberg A, Avila F, Bellone RR.Coat color is a trait of economic significance in horses. Variants in seven genes have been documented to cause white patterning in horses. Of the 34 variants that have been identified in KIT proto-oncogene, receptor tyrosine kinase (), 27 have only been reported in a single individual or family and thus not all are routinely offered for genetic testing. Therefore, to enable proper use of marker-assisted selection, determining breed specificity for these alleles is warranted. Screening 19 unregistered all-white Shetland ponies for 16 white patterning markers identified 14 individuals whose phe...
Wang L, Unger L, Sharif H, Eriksson S, Gerber V, Rönnberg H.Thymidine kinase 1 (TK1) plays a key role in the synthesis of deoxythymidine triphosphate (dTTP) and is thus important for DNA replication and cell proliferation. The expression of TK1 is highest during S-phase, and it is rapidly degraded after mitosis. In cancer cells, TK1 is upregulated, resulting in leakage of excess TK1 into the blood. Consequently, serum TK1 has been used as a diagnostic and prognostic cancer biomarker, mainly in human medicine. The aims of this work were to characterize equine TK1 and to evaluate its suitability as a serum biomarker for equine lymphoma. Results: Equine T...
Liu X, Zhang Y, Liu W, Li Y, Pan J, Pu Y, Han J, Orlando L, Ma Y, Jiang L.Chinese ponies are endemic to the mountainous areas of southwestern China and were first reported in the archaeological record at the Royal Tomb of Zhongshan King, Mancheng, dated to approximately ∼2,100 YBP. Previous work has started uncovering the genetic basis of size variation in western ponies and horses, revealing a limited number of loci, including HMGA2,LCORL/NCAPG,ZFAT, and LASP1. Whether the same genetic pathways also drive the small body size of Chinese ponies, which show striking anatomical differences to Shetland ponies, remains unclear. To test this, we combined whole-genome se...
The Journal of heredityDecember 12, 2021
Volume 113, Issue 3 238-247 doi: 10.1093/jhered/esab070
Esdaile E, Avila F, Bellone RR.American Standardbreds were developed as a harness racing horse breed. The United States Trotting Association closed the studbook in 1973 and implemented a book size cap in 2009. This study aimed to investigate genetic diversity in the American Standardbred after the studbook cap was introduced using short tandem repeats (STRs) and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Sixteen STRs from horses foaled from 2010 to 2015 and their sires and dams (n = 50 621) were utilized to examine allelic richness (Ar), expected heterozygosity (HE), observed heterozygosity (HO), unbiased heterozygosity (HU), ...
Murchie TJ, Monteath AJ, Mahony ME, Long GS, Cocker S, Sadoway T, Karpinski E, Zazula G, MacPhee RDE, Froese D, Poinar HN.The temporal and spatial coarseness of megafaunal fossil records complicates attempts to to disentangle the relative impacts of climate change, ecosystem restructuring, and human activities associated with the Late Quaternary extinctions. Advances in the extraction and identification of ancient DNA that was shed into the environment and preserved for millennia in sediment now provides a way to augment discontinuous palaeontological assemblages. Here, we present a 30,000-year sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) record derived from loessal permafrost silts in the Klondike region of Yukon, Canada. ...
Atsenova N, Palova N, Mehandjyiski I, Neov B, Radoslavov G, Hristov P.The question about the time and the place of horse domestication, a process which had a profound impact on the progress of mankind, is disputable. According to the most widely accepted hypothesis, the earliest domestication of the horse happened in the western parts of the Eurasian steppes, between the Northern Black Sea region and present-day Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. It seems that it occurred not earlier than the first half and most probably during the middle (even the last third) of the fourth millennium BC (from ∼ 5.5 kya). The next steps of large-scale horse breeding occurred almost ...
Kinoshita Y, Kakoi H, Ishige T, Yamanaka T, Niwa H, Uchida-Fujii E, Nukada T, Ueno T.Taylorella equigenitalis causes contagious equine metritis. Here we compared seven nucleic acid amplification tests for T. equigenitalis to select a rapid and reliable diagnostic method. The 95% detection limits of each assay varied greatly: real-time PCR had the lowest detection limit (0.77 fg/reaction); those of some of the conventional PCRs (cPCRs) were >100 fg/reaction. In experimentally infected samples, real-time PCR and semi-nested PCR showed the highest positive numbers (33 out of 42 samples), but two of the cPCRs detected only 2 and 7 positive results. Our results indicate that the us...
Ribeiro DSC, Martins AV, Lobão LF, Ribeiro MS, Palmer JPS, Corrêa LL, Uchôa CMA, da Silva S, Meireles MV, Amendoeira MRR, Barbosa ADS.An analysis was made of the frequency of Cryptosporidium spp. in fecal samples from horses raised on farms in the Teresópolis city, state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the risk factors that favored this infection. Between 2019 and 2020, 314 samples of equine feces were collected, 287 of which came from English Thoroughbred horses and 27 from ponies. Information on the horses and their management were retrieved from a stud book and forms filled out by trainers. The fecal samples were subjected to macroscopic analysis, modified Sheather's and Lutz parasitological techniques, safranin staining,...
Salis AT, Bray SCE, Lee MSY, Heiniger H, Barnett R, Burns JA, Doronichev V, Fedje D, Golovanova L, Harington CR, Hockett B, Kosintsev P, Lai X....The Bering Land Bridge connecting North America and Eurasia was periodically exposed and inundated by oscillating sea levels during the Pleistocene glacial cycles. This land connection allowed the intermittent dispersal of animals, including humans, between Western Beringia (far northeast Asia) and Eastern Beringia (northwest North America), changing the faunal community composition of both continents. The Pleistocene glacial cycles also had profound impacts on temperature, precipitation and vegetation, impacting faunal community structure and demography. While these palaeoenvironmental impact...
Rahmani SS, Malekifard F, Tavassoli M.Neospora caninum is an Apicomplexan parasite that can cause enormous economic losses due to abortions in cattle. The present study investigated the role of Neospora spp. infection in equine abortion in Iranian donkeys using molecular and phylogenetic analyses. Twenty-nine-aborted fetuses and 29 blood samples from their dams were collected from six different regions in the West and Northwest of Iran. They were tested for N. caninum by PCR at the Nc5 locus, followed by sequencing of five of the PCR products. The overall molecular prevalence was 34.5% in blood samples and the prevalence by DNA de...
Risso A, Campos G, Garcia H, Zerpa H.Equine piroplasmosis (EP) is a tick-borne infectious disease highly prevalent in tropical and subtropical regions, such as Venezuela. EP affects wild and domestic equids leading to several clinical presentations, from asymptomatic to severely affected animals. In this study, thirty-three (33) sport horses under regular training activities and from endemic regions of north-central Venezuela were submitted to an observational survey, case-control, to describe the presence of clinical signs and natural EP infections. A conventional PCR assay targeting the SSU rRNA gene revealed EP etiologic agent...
Bailey E, Petersen JL, Kalbfleisch TS.Thoroughbred horses have been selected for racing performance for more than 400 years. Despite continued selection, race times have not improved significantly during the past 60 years, raising the question of whether genetic variation for racing performance still exists. Studies using phenotypes such as race time, money earned, and handicapping, however, demonstrate that there is extensive variation within these traits and that they are heritable. Even so, these are poor measures of racing success since Thoroughbreds race at different ages and distances and on different types of tracks, and so...
Al-Khaldi K, Yimer N, Sadiq MB, Firdaus Jesse Bin Abdullah F, Salam Babji A, Al-Bulushi S.Diluents and various biological products have been used in different animal species, with promising outcomes in post-thaw sperm quality. Nevertheless, only a few reports are available for the semen of Arabian horses. Edible bird's nest (EBN) - a product of the salivary secretions of swiftlet species is widely known to have both antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Presently, there is no data available on the role of EBN supplemented in different extenders and its effect on semen quality in stallion semen. Two in vitro experiments were conducted to examine the effects of edible bird's ...
Peano A, Arnoldi S, Čmoková A, Hubka V.This article reports the first verified cases of infection by Trichophyton bullosum in Africa since the description of the fungus, isolated in 1933 from the coat of horses in Tunisia and Mali. We found the fungus in cutaneous samples obtained from donkeys suffering from severe dermatitis with areas of alopecia and scaling in the surroundings of Cairo (Egypt). Fungal elements (arthroconidia and hyphae) were seen at the microscopy of material collected by skin scraping and digested in NaOH. Fungal colonies grown on various culture media were identified through PCR and sequencing of the ITS rDNA ...
Munday JS, Orbell G, Fairley RA, Hardcastle M, Vaatstra B.Equine sarcoids are common mesenchymal neoplasms of horses that are caused by cross-species infection by . While bovine papillomavirus (BPV) 1 and 2 are the most common causes, there are differences between countries regarding which of these BPV types cause the majority of sarcoids. Additionally, no causative PV can be detected in a subset of sarcoids, suggesting that other PV types could be rarer causes of these neoplasms. In the present study, consensus PCR primers and PCR primers specific for the five types currently known to cause mesenchymal neoplasia (BPV1, BPV2, BPV13, BPV14, and Ovis ...
Ganeshpurkar A, Singh R, Kumar D, Gutti G, Sardana D, Shivhare S, Singh RB, Kumar A, Singh SK.Machine learning (ML), an emerging field in drug design, has the potential to predict toxicity, shape-based analysis of inhibitors, scoring function (SF) etc. In the present study, a homology model, docking protocol, and a dedicated SF have been developed to identify the inhibitors of horse butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) enzyme. Horse BChE enzyme has homology with human BChE and is a substitute for the screening of inhibitors. The developed homology model was validated and the active site residues were identified from Cavityplus to generate grid box for docking. The validation of docking invol...
Marčeková P, Mad'ar M, Styková E, Kačírová J, Sondorová M, Mudroň P, Žert Z.Equine hoof canker and bovine digital dermatitis are infectious inflammatory diseases of the hooves with an unknown etiology. However, anaerobic spirochetes of the genus Treponema are considered to be potential etiological agents. The aim of this study was to find a suitable way to isolate DNA and to detect the presence of treponemal DNA in samples of equine hoof canker and bovine digital dermatitis. DNAzol®® Direct and column kits were used to isolate DNA from samples of equine hoof canker and bovine digital dermatitis. The presence of Treponema spp. was detected using PCR and Sanger sequen...
Librado P, Khan N, Fages A, Kusliy MA, Suchan T, Tonasso-Calvière L, Schiavinato S, Alioglu D, Fromentier A, Perdereau A, Aury JM, Gaunitz C....Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 BC. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia and Anatolia, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don regi...
Takai S, Sudo M, Sakai M, Suzuki K, Sasaki Y, Kakuda T, Suzuki Y.Rhodococcus equi was isolated from the gastrointestinal contents of earthworms (family Megascolecidae) and their surrounding soil collected from pastures of two horse-breeding farms in Aomori Prefecture, outdoor pig pens, forest in Towada campus, orange groves and forest where wild boars (Sus scrofa) are established in Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture. The number of R. equi in the lower gastrointestinal contents of 23 earthworms collected from our campus was significantly larger than that of the upper gastrointestinal content. The mean numbers of R. equi from the gastrointestinal contents of earthw...
Tozaki T, Ohnuma A, Hamilton NA, Kikuchi M, Ishige T, Kakoi H, Hirota KI, Kusano K, Nagata SI.Gene doping is prohibited for fair competition in human and horse sports. One style of gene doping is the administration of an exogeneous gene, called a transgene, to postnatal humans and horses. Although many transgene detection methods based on quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR), including real-time PCR and digital PCR, have been recently developed, it remains difficult to reliably detect low-copy transgenes. In this study, we developed and validated a nested digital PCR method to specifically detect low-copy transgenes. The nested digital PCR consists of (1) preamplification using...
Rowe Á, Flanagan S, Barry G, Katz LM, Lane EA, Duggan V.Warmblood Fragile Foal Syndrome (WFFS) is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by a mutation in the procollagen-lysine, 2-oxoglutarate 5-dioxygenase 1 (PLOD1) gene. Homozygosity for the mutation results in defective collagen synthesis which clinically manifests as the birth of non viable or still born foals with abnormally fragile skin. While the mutation has been identified in non Warmblood breeds including the Thoroughbred, to date all homozygous clinically affected cases reported in the scientific literature are Warmblood foals. The objective of this study was to investigate the carrier f...
Suchan T, Kusliy MA, Khan N, Chauvey L, Tonasso-Calvière L, Schiavinato S, Southon J, Keller M, Kitagawa K, Krause J, Bessudnov AN, Bessudnov AA....DNA hybridization-capture techniques allow researchers to focus their sequencing efforts on preselected genomic regions. This feature is especially useful when analysing ancient DNA (aDNA) extracts, which are often dominated by exogenous environmental sources. Here, we assessed, for the first time, the performance of hyRAD as an inexpensive and design-free alternative to commercial capture protocols to obtain authentic aDNA data from osseous remains. HyRAD relies on double enzymatic restriction of fresh DNA extracts to produce RNA probes that cover only a fraction of the genome and can serve a...
Ataseven VS, Bilge-Dagalp S, Oguzoglu TC, Karapinar Z, Güzel M, Tan MT.The equid herpesvirus 2 (EHV-2) and 5 (EHV-5), identified agents of respiratory infections and keratoconjunctivitis cases in some equids, comprise a high degree of antigenic heterogeneity. Prevalence and genetic characterization of EHV-2 and EHV-5 strains from Turkey were investigated in this study. A total of 73 nasal swabs and 54 blood specimens were sampled from horses with respiratory tract diseases characterized by mucopurulent nasal discharge and occasional coughing. Overall, EHV-2- and EHV-5-specific DNA amplicons were obtained from 19.2% (14/73) and 21.9% (16/73) of horses tested by mu...
Kader A, Liu X, Dong K, Song S, Pan J, Yang M, Chen X, He X, Jiang L, Ma Y.Copy number variation (CNV), an essential form of genetic variation, has been increasingly recognized as one promising genetic marker in the analysis of animal genomes. Here, we used the Equine 70K single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping array for the genome-wide detection of CNVs in 96 horses from three diverse Chinese breeds: Debao pony (DB), Mongolian horse (MG) and Yili horse (YL). A total of 287 CNVs were determined and merged into 122 CNV regions (CNVRs) ranging from 199 bp to 2344 kb in size and distributed in a heterogeneous manner on chromosomes. These CNVRs were integrated with s...
Traversa D, Giangaspero A, Galli P, Paoletti B, Otranto D, Gasser RB.Gastric or cutaneous habronemosis caused by Habronema microstoma Creplin, 1849 and Habronema muscae Carter, 1865 is a parasitic disease of equids transmitted by muscid flies. There is a paucity of information on the epidemiology of this disease, which is mainly due to limitations with diagnosis in the live animal and with the identification of the parasites in the intermediate hosts. To overcome such limitations, a molecular approach, based on the use of genetic markers in the second internal transcribed spacer (ITS-2) of ribosomal DNA, was established for the two species of Habronema. Charact...
Tozaki T, Gamo S, Takasu M, Kikuchi M, Kakoi H, Hirota KI, Kusano K, Nagata SI.Doping control is an important and indispensable aspect of fair horse racing; genetic doping has been recently included to this. In this study, we aimed to develop a detection method of gene doping. A plasmid cloned with human erythropoietin gene (p.hEPO, 250 μg/head) was intramuscularly injected into a microminipig. Subsequently, p.hEPO was extracted from 1 mL of plasma and detected by droplet digital polymerase chain reaction. Results: The results confirmed that the maximum amount of plasmid was detected at 15 min after administration and the majority of the plasmid was degraded in the b...
Balmer P, Bauer A, Pujar S, McGarvey KM, Welle M, Galichet A, Müller EJ, Pruitt KD, Leeb T, Jagannathan V.Keratins represent a large protein family with essential structural and functional roles in epithelial cells of skin, hair follicles, and other organs. During evolution the genes encoding keratins have undergone multiple rounds of duplication and humans have two clusters with a total of 55 functional keratin genes in their genomes. Due to the high similarity between different keratin paralogs and species-specific differences in gene content, the currently available keratin gene annotation in species with draft genome assemblies such as dog and horse is still imperfect. We compared the National...
Trewby H, Ayele G, Borzacchiello G, Brandt S, Campo MS, Del Fava C, Marais J, Leonardi L, Vanselow B, Biek R, Nasir L.Papillomaviruses are a family of slowly evolving DNA viruses and their evolution is commonly linked to that of their host species. However, whilst bovine papillomavirus-1 (BPV-1) primarily causes warts in its natural host, the cow, it can also cause locally aggressive and invasive skin tumours in equids, known as sarcoids, and thus provides a rare contemporary example of cross-species transmission of a papillomavirus. Here, we describe the first phylogenetic analysis of BPV-1 in equine sarcoids to our knowledge, allowing us to explore the evolutionary history of BPV-1 and investigate its cross...
Hastie PM, Mitchell K, Murray JA.There is a need to further our understanding of the role that the equine hindgut ecosystem plays in digestive processes and diseases. The aim of the present study was to utilise the real-time PCR technique to determine the abundance of candidate cellulolytic (Ruminococcus flavefaciens; Fibrobacter succinogenes) and non-cellulolytic (Streptococcus bovis) bacteria in lumen contents from the caecum, ventral and dorsal colon, and rectum of healthy horses (n 14). Total DNA was extracted from frozen and lyophilised lumen contents, and PCR primers and Taqman probes were designed based on 16S rDNA seq...
Lancaster WD, Olson C, Meinke W.Four of five spontaneous benign equine connective tissue tumors of unknown etiology and a bovine papilloma virus (BPV)-induced equine tumor contained BPV-specific DNA sequences as determined by DNA-DNA hybridization of DNA from tumors with BPV DNA labeled in vitro. Analysis of the kinetics of reassociation indicated that 20-75% of the BPV genome was present in the various tumors. The number of partial BPV genome equivalents ranged from 60 to 500 copies per diploid quantity of cellular DNA. Thermal denaturation profiles of duplexes formed between labeled BPV DNA and DNA from tumor cells indicat...
Guérin G, Bailey E, Bernoco D, Anderson I, Antczak DF, Bell K, Binns MM, Bowling AT, Brandon R, Cholewinski G, Cothran EG, Ellegren H, Förster M....The goal of the First International Equine Gene Mapping Workshop, held in 1995, was the construction of a low density, male linkage map for the horse. For this purpose, the International Horse Reference Family Panel (IHRFP) was established, consisting of 12 paternal half-sib families with 448 half-sib offspring provided by 10 laboratories. Blood samples were collected and DNA extracted in each laboratory and sent to the Lexington laboratory (KY, USA) for dispatch in aliquots to 14 typing laboratories. In total, 161 markers (144 microsatellites, seven blood groups and 10 proteins) were tested f...
Roberto da Costa RP, Serrão PM, Monteiro S, Pessa P, Silva JR, Ferreira-Dias G.Cell proliferation and apoptosis are hormone-dependent physiological processes involved in endometrial growth and regression. The aims of the present study were: (1) to evaluate endometrial cell proliferation using proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) expression; (2) to evaluate the induction of endometrial cell death by the expression of active caspase-3 and the apoptotic phenotype visualised by DNA fragmentation; and (3) to relate these observations to endometrial tissue dynamics in the equine endometrium throughout the oestrous cycle. Endometria were assigned to follicular and luteal p...
McCue ME, Valberg SJ, Lucio M, Mickelson JR.A missense mutation in the GYS1 gene was recently described in horses with polysaccharide storage myopathy (PSSM). Objective: The first objective was to determine the prevalence of the GYS1 mutation in horses with PSSM from diverse breeds. The second objective was to determine if the prevalence of the GYS1 mutation differed between horses diagnosed with PSSM based on grade 1 (typically amylase-sensitive) or grade 2 (typically amylase-resistant) polysaccharide. Methods: Eight hundred and thirty-one PSSM horses from 36 breeds. Methods: Horses with PSSM diagnosed by histopathology of skeletal mus...
Ding Q, Bramble L, Yuzbasiyan-Gurkan V, Bell T, Meek K.Previously, spontaneous genetic immunodeficiencies in mice, Arabian foals, and recently in Jack Russell terriers have been ascribed to defects in DNA-PKcs (catalytic subunit of the DNA dependent protein kinase) expression. In severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) foals, a 5 bp deletion at codon 9480 results in a frameshift and a 967 amino acid deletion from the C terminus (including the entire PI3 kinase domain) and an unstable mutant protein. In SCID mice, a single base pair mutation results in a premature stop codon and deletion of 83 amino acids; as in SCID foals, the mutant protein is un...
Lange CE, Vetsch E, Ackermann M, Favrot C, Tobler K.Papillomaviruses appear to be species-specific pathogens, and it was suggested that each animal species might harbour its own set of papillomaviruses. However, all approaches addressing the underlying evolutionary phenomena still suffer from very limited data about animal papillomaviruses. In case of the horse for example, only three equine papillomaviruses (EcPVs) have been identified. To further address the situation in this host, suspected papillomavirus-associated lesions were tested for EcPV DNA. Four novel EcPV types were detected and their genomes entirely cloned and sequenced. They dis...
Browning GF, Studdert MJ.The epidemiology of equine herpesvirus 2 was examined by using restriction endonuclease DNA fingerprints to distinguish viruses isolated from two groups of horses. The first group consisted of three yearlings isolated from other horses but in contact with each other for 418 days, whereas the second comprised seven mares and their foals, which were sampled at monthly intervals from parturition until the foals were about 180 days old. There was a complex pattern of transmission, with 15 different viruses isolated from both groups. Four distinguishable viruses were isolated from the three yearlin...
Brandt S, Haralambus R, Shafti-Keramat S, Steinborn R, Stanek C, Kirnbauer R.Bovine papillomavirus type 1 or 2 (BPV-1, BPV-2) are accepted causal factors in equine sarcoid pathogenesis. Whereas viral genomes are consistently found and expressed within lesions, intact virions have never been detected, thus permissiveness of sarcoids for BPV-1 replication remains unclear. To reassess this issue, an immunocapture PCR (IC/PCR) was established using L1-specific antibodies to capture L1-DNA complexes followed by amplification of the viral genome. Following validation of the assay, 13 sarcoid-bearing horses were evaluated by IC/PCR. Samples were derived from 21 tumours, 4 per...
Paternina LE, Verbel-Vergara D, Romero-Ricardo L, Pérez-Doria A, Paternina-Gómez M, Martínez L, Bejarano EE.Identification of the bloodmeal sources of phlebotomine sand flies is fundamental to determining which species are anthropophilic and understanding the transmission of Leishmania parasites in natural epidemiological settings. The objective of this study was to identify sand fly bloodmeals in the mixed leishmaniasis focus of the department of Sucre, northern Colombia. In all 141 engorged female sand flies were analyzed, after being captured in intradomiciliary, peridomiciliary and extradomiciliary habitats with Shannon and CDC traps and by active searching in diurnal resting sites. Bloodmeals w...
Faubladier C, Chaucheyras-Durand F, da Veiga L, Julliand V.This study evaluated the effect of transportation on fecal bacterial communities and activities in horses with or without supplementation of live yeast and attempted to link those effects with changes in blood stress markers. Four mature horses were assigned to a crossover design and fed a basal diet (60:40 forage to concentrate; 1.45% BW on a DM basis), with or without supplementation, of 2 × 10(10) cfu/d of Saccharomyces cerevisiae CNCM I-1077. After a 14-d adaptation to dietary treatments, the 5-d experiment started 1 d before transportation (d -1). At d 0, horses were simultaneously trans...
Ginolhac A, Vilstrup J, Stenderup J, Rasmussen M, Stiller M, Shapiro B, Zazula G, Froese D, Steinmann KE, Thompson JF, Al-Rasheid KA, Gilbert TM....Second-generation sequencing technologies have revolutionized our ability to recover genetic information from the past, allowing the characterization of the first complete genomes from past individuals and extinct species. Recently, third generation Helicos sequencing platforms, which perform true Single-Molecule DNA Sequencing (tSMS), have shown great potential for sequencing DNA molecules from Pleistocene fossils. Here, we aim at improving even further the performance of tSMS for ancient DNA by testing two novel tSMS template preparation methods for Pleistocene bone fossils, namely oligonucl...
Lange CE, Tobler K, Lehner A, Grest P, Welle MM, Schwarzwald CC, Favrot C.Equine penile papillomas, in situ carcinomas, and invasive carcinomas are hypothesized to belong to a continuum of papillomavirus-induced diseases. The former ones clinically present as small grey papules, while the latter 2 lesions are more hyperplasic or alternatively ulcerated. To test the hypothesis that these lesions are papillomavirus-induced, samples of 24 horses with characteristic clinical and histologic findings of penile papillomas or in situ or invasive squamous cell carcinomas were collected. As controls, 11 horses with various lesions--namely, Balanoposthitis (6 cases), melanoma ...
Contreras M, Morales A, García-Amado MA, De Vera M, Bermúdez V, Gueneau P.To assess the presence of Helicobacter DNA in the gastric mucosa Thoroughbred horses. Results: Squamous and glandular mucosa samples were collected from 20 Thoroughbreds. None of these horses had shown any clinical symptoms of gastrointestinal disease. Necropsy tissues were analysed using histopathological techniques and a Helicobacter genus-specific PCR assay followed by sequencing of the amplicons. Seven horses were diagnosed with gastric ulceration, five with gastritis and six with both pathologies. Only two horses had a healthy gastric mucosa. Helicobacter-like DNA was detected in two out ...
Detournay O, Morrison DA, Wagner B, Zarnegar B, Wattrang E.This study aimed at identifying all of the type I interferon (IFN) genes of the horse and at monitoring their expression in equine cells on in vitro induction. We identified 32 putative type I IFN loci on horse chromosome 23 and an unplaced genomic scaffold. A phylogentic analysis characterized these into 8 different type I IFN classes, that is, putative functional genes for 6 IFN-α, 4 IFN-β, 8 IFN-ω (plus 4 pseudogenes), 3 IFN-δ (plus 1 pseudogene), 1 IFN-κ and 1 IFN-ε, plus 1 IFN-ν pseudogene, and 3 loci belonging to what has previously been called IFN-αω. Our analyses indicate that...
Chanter N, Collin N, Holmes N, Binns M, Mumford J.The 16S-23S RNA gene intergenic spacers of isolates of Streptococcus equi (n = 5), S. zooepidemicus (n = 5), S. equisimilis (n = 3) and S. dysgalactiae (n = 2) were sequenced and compared. There were distinct regions within the spacer, arranged in the order 1-9 for all S. equi and one S. zooepidemicus isolate and 1,2 and 4-9 for the remaining isolates. Region 4 was identical to the tRNA(ala) gene found in the 16S-23S intergenic spacers of other streptococci. Regions 1, 5, 6 and 7 had distinct variations, each conserved in different isolates. However, amongst the intergenic spacers there were d...
Bowling AT, Zimmermann W, Ryder O, Penado C, Peto S, Chemnick L, Yasinetskaya N, Zharkikh T.In our continuing efforts to document genetic diversity in Przewalski's horses and relatedness with domestic horses, we report genetic variation at 22 loci of blood group and protein polymorphisms and 29 loci of DNA (microsatellite) polymorphisms. The loci have been assigned by linkage or synteny mapping to 20 autosomes and the X chromosome of the domestic horse (plus four loci unassigned to a chromosome). With cumulative data from tests of 568 Przewalski's horses using blood, hair or tooth samples, no species-defining markers were identified, however a few markers were present in the wild spe...
Bhoora R, Quan M, Matjila PT, Zweygarth E, Guthrie AJ, Collins NE.Although a quantitative real-time PCR assay (qPCR) assay for the detection of Theileria equi has been developed and evaluated, it is possible that additional, as yet undetected 18S rRNA gene sequence variants may exist. A qPCR assay targeting a different gene, used in conjunction with the T. equi 18S rRNA qPCR assay, could assist in the detection of all T. equi genotypes in field samples. A T. equi ema-1-specific qPCR (Ueti et al., 2003) was tested on 107 South African field samples, 90 of which tested positive for T. equi antibody using the immuno-fluorescent antibody test (IFAT). The qPCR as...
Ault A, Zajac AM, Kong WP, Gorres JP, Royals M, Wei CJ, Bao S, Yang ZY, Reedy SE, Sturgill TL, Page AE, Donofrio-Newman J, Adams AA, Balasuriya UB....Equine influenza A (H3N8) virus infection is a leading cause of respiratory disease in horses, resulting in widespread morbidity and economic losses. As with influenza in other species, equine influenza strains continuously mutate, often requiring the development of new vaccines. Current inactivated (killed) vaccines, while efficacious, only offer limited protection against diverse subtypes and require frequent boosts. Research into new vaccine technologies, including gene-based vaccines, aims to increase the neutralization potency, breadth, and duration of protective immunity. Here, we demons...
Pusterla N, Leutenegger CM, Wilson WD, Watson JL, Ferraro GL, Madigan JE.Based on the hypothesis that the viral load of cells infected with EHV-4 will likely change during the course of disease, TaqMan PCR was used to investigate and characterize the kinetics of EHV-4 viral DNA load (glycoprotein B gene) and transcriptional activity (glycoprotein B and latency-associated transcripts) in peripheral blood leukocytes (PBLs) and nasopharyngeal secretions (NSs) collected from 11 foals during a field outbreak of respiratory disease. The EHV-4 DNA load in PBLs was low and of short duration after onset of clinical signs. In contrast, the EHV-4 load in NSs remained high for...
Léon A, Fortier G, Fortier C, Freymuth F, Tapprest J, Leclercq R, Pronost S.The major role of EHV-1 in equine abortion is widely reported in the literature but the contribution of EHV-2, EHV-3, EHV-4 or EHV-5 remains less well documented. The objective of this study is to evaluate the contribution of these five different EHVs to equine abortion in a variety of biological tissues using a consensus polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The test was validated for specificity and sensitivity in horses before screening specimens from 407 foetuses, stillbirths and premature foals collected over a 2.5-year interval. Positive results obtained with this assay were compared to other...
Lei R, Wang X, Zhang D, Liu Y, Chen Q, Jiang N.Equine piroplasmosis (EP) is a severe disease of horses caused by the tick-borne protozoa Theileria equi (T. equi) and Babesia caballi (B. caballi). Infectious carriers are not always symptomatic, meaning there is a risk to non-enzootic areas. Regulatory tests for EP include sero-epidemiological methods for equine babesiosis, but these lack specificity due to cross-reactivity with other Babesia species. In this study, we present a real-time quantitative recombinase polymerase amplification (qRPA) method for fast simultaneous detection of both T. equi and B. caballi. In this method, primers and...
Muscatello G, Gerbaud S, Kennedy C, Gilkerson JR, Buckley T, Klay M, Leadon DP, Browning GF.Rhodococcoccus equi is a significant cause of bronchopneumonia in foals worldwide. Infection of the lungs is believed to result from inhalation of virulent R. equi in dust from contaminated environments. A measure of infectious risk in an environment is the level of airborne contamination. Objective: To assess and compare the level of airborne virulent R. equi in paddocks and stables. Methods: Air samples were collected sequentially over the 2003 foaling season from the paddocks and stables on 3 Irish horse breeding farms affected by R. equi pneumonia. Colony blotting and DNA hybridisation tec...
