THE world鈥檚 first cloned horse could be born any day now and another pregnancy is well established. And while cloned horses are currently banned from competing in top races, some in the industry believe the ban will not last long.
Veterinarian Cesare Galli of the Laboratory of Reproductive Technology in Cremona, Italy, says his group expects a cloned horse to be born in a matter of days. And Katrin Hinrichs鈥檚 team at Texas A&M University expect another clone to be born in November. It took her group just five tries to get the pregnancy, far quicker than in other species.
The news comes hot on the heels of last week鈥檚 announcement that the first equine clone, an apparently healthy mule named Idaho Gem, was born almost a month ago, providing an important proof of principle for equine cloning. 鈥淭he birth was natural, unassisted and within 12 minutes he was standing on his feet,鈥� says Gordon Woods of the University of Idaho, whose team cloned the mule (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1086743).
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Various groups have been struggling for years to clone horses. Equine eggs do not respond as well as those of other animals to the chemicals routinely used in IVF and cloning. But it seems the obstacles have now been overcome.
The big question is whether cloned horses will be healthy. If they are, the implications for the multibillion-dollar racing industry and other equestrian sports could be huge. For thoroughbred races, by far the most popular kind, there is an international agreement that bans any kind of assisted reproduction, which would include cloning, and some other racing associations have adopted similar anti-cloning policies.
But some people think this will change. 鈥淚n my opinion, within the next five to eight years they will accept clones,鈥� says Don Jacklin, president of the American Mule Racing Association and the main backer of Idaho Gem鈥檚 cloning. He says cloning will offer racing enthusiasts an opportunity that will be hard to resist: the chance to perpetuate the lineage of prizewinning horses that have been castrated.
One of the worries of those opposed to cloning is that it would lead to the dominance of certain bloodlines, reducing genetic diversity and eventually weakening the breed. But perhaps the biggest fear in the racing industry is the devastating blow cloning might deal to the breeding community.
Winning stallions can be worth millions of dollars, and owners can charge up to $100,000 for a stallion鈥檚 services as a stud. 鈥淭he value would decline [if cloning were allowed], because the product would be available at a mass scale,鈥� says John Maxse, a spokesman for the Jockey Club in the UK.
Jacklin believes such objections could be resolved by setting rules that would restrict the number of clones allowed from each horse. Under such a scheme, owners could still earn money by charging royalties for each clone and their offspring, he says.
Even if cloning remains banned in the upper echelons of the racing world, there is likely to be a place for it in some competitions. Other equestrian sports, such as eventing, do not currently prohibit cloning, and a cloned horse could compete in the Olympics. There are also some races open to all breeds. 鈥淎nd they have multimillion-dollar purses,鈥� adds Hinrichs.
The first racing clone could be Idaho Gem itself. The mule is the 鈥渂rother鈥� of a world champion whose parents were bred again to create a fetus from which Idaho Gem was cloned. Jacklin hopes to race him in a few years.