Cornell U.: Cornell U. researchers help map horse genome.

(From University Wire)

Byline: Tim Fasano

Thanks to a recent breakthrough by the Horse Genome Project, a horse named Twilight has left her genetic imprint on the history of veterinary medicine. Cornell University's own Thoroughbred mare, Twilight, was the donor whose cells were used by Project researchers across the country to assemble the complete sequence of the horse genome. While isolated gene sequences were contributed by a wide variety of researchers, the actual assemblage of the genome was completed by a smaller team led by Kerstin Lindblad-Toh at the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

Three-year-old Twilight is just one of a small herd of horses stabled at the McConville Barn. This thoroughbred family has been interbred for 25 years for research purposes.

The $15 million price tag for the Horse Genome Project was paid by the National Human Genome Research Institute, one of the National Institutes of Health.

The Horse Genome Project's achievement, the complete sequencing of the approximately 2.7 billion DNA base pairs in the horse genome, has been deposited in public databases for the use of biomedical and…