From Scientists Say They’ve Cloned a Horse:
Scientists in Italy say they have created the world’s first cloned horse, raising the possibility of a sequel to the next Seabiscuit or a carbon copy of Kentucky Derby champion Funny Cide.The small, sturdy work horse is now two months old, weighs about 220 pounds and is in excellent health, said its creators. Their announcement beats a Texas A&M team awaiting the birth of its own horse clone.
The cloned Haflinger horse is named Prometea after Prometheus, the character in Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans.
In a twist for the growing barnyard of cloned animals, the Haflinger mare that gave birth to the Promotea was also the source of her DNA, meaning she and her foal are identical twins.
Promotea isn’t the only recently cloned equine though:
Prometea was born just two weeks after the first member of the equine family — a mule — was cloned at the University of Idaho. Researchers there have since produced two more cloned mules, which are a hybrid of a donkey and a horse.Scientific differences in the two cloning projects are striking.
The mules were cloned from cells extracted from developing mule fetuses. But Prometea’s DNA came from her adult mother’s skin cells. Cloning adult DNA has proven more difficult than copying fetal DNA.
There were other differences. The Idaho team harvested fertile eggs, one at a time, from mares. They then removed the nucleus of each egg and inserted DNA from cells of a mule fetus. Those reconstructed eggs were surgically implanted into the wombs of female horses.
Galli’s team, however, harvested hundreds of eggs from mare carcasses at a slaughterhouse. They cultured the eggs, removed their DNA and replaced it with DNA taken from either adult male or female horse skin cells.
Out of a total of 841 reconstructed embryos, only 22 developed to advanced embryos within about a week. Seventeen of those were introduced into nine mares, resulting in four pregnancies, but only one, Prometea, developed to full term.
It was delivered naturally and unassisted on May 28.