FROM THE DAY the first human looked at a horse and thought, “I could ride that”, the human race has been experimenting with equine breeding, matching this horse to that horse in an attempt to create the perfect animal for a specific role. Selective mating has led horse breeds to evolve in parallel, until we find that today's Arab, who is built for speed and stamina, is very different from his draught horse cousins or native pony relations, and that difference is at a genetic level.
Cracking the code
Over the past 20 years researchers have been working to discover what the equine genetic code tells us about how horses function.
US Thoroughbred mare Twilight was the first horse to have her genome sequenced, in 2006, as part of the international Horse Genome Project.
Since then hundreds of samples from other breeds — ranging from Icelandic ponies to Belgian Warmbloods — have been sequenced to create a database of genetic markers to compare variation within and between different breeds.
