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Aug. 16th, 2005 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI don't know how I missed this one, but I did. Figure on it as news, just a little late...
Once upon a time, there was a newspaper classified ad selling a grey arabian gelding named Pieraz. He was listed for five hundred dollars, about the going rate for a generic six-year-old grey arabian gelding with no particular skills in the late eighties. A lady named Valerie Kanavy bought him from the classified ad. Valerie trained Pieraz to be an endurance horse, one who competed in hundred-mile events. As it turned out, Pieraz (more popularly known as Cash) was really quite competent on the trail, able to finish a hundred mile ride in, as it turned out, world-champion fashion. Twice, in 1994 and in 1996, he was the best in the world. But, y'know, he was a gelding and that was that. Or was it?
Pieraz is still alive. He's 23 this year and, strange as it may sound, it appears that they've cloned him. Successfully, as of the end of February, 2005. Some genetics research folks over in Europe (France and Italy) managed it. Details here. For the non-husbandry-minded, the relevant thing you should be getting from this news is that a cloned Pieraz wouldn't be born gelded and therefore could sire offspring with the same genes as the twice-world-champion endurance horse.
I was kind of wondering, myself, when researchers would get done with using unknown animals for clone source material and would start using things we might fucking be interested in buying... and producing un-gelded clones of superior performance horses seemed, to my mind, one of the more lucrative avenues to pursue. There are more than a few superior performance geldings -- French Flash Hawk (better known as Bozo) dominated the barrel-racing world (5-time WPRA World Champion Barrel Horse, Five-Time AQHA/PRCA Barrel Racing Horse of the Year) in the 1990's. In the seventies, Red Rum won the Grand National three times (73, 74, 77), finished second twice (75 & 76), and remains the only horse ever to do that at Aintree. Cash was another. Now, I'm all for this as a useful and interesting development. However, what the BLOODY HELL is the AHA's position about this? (Their website was singularly uninformative -- I poked around a bit. I guess they think they've got about two years to come up with a decision on the matter before this will be a live issue.) I mean, honestly, are they going to allow the registration of foals out of registered mares and by a cloned Pieraz? How the hell...?
I mean, yeah, Pieraz has papers. (PIERAZ, AHR*250877, 28 Feb 1982) [You can look up any registered arabian horse by name on their site -- I checked. It also had the IRH (GF NILE KAIA, AHR*556789, 30 Apr 1998), who is not particularly, y'know, famous.] But... I don't think that the foal has been registered. The forms have a space for sire and dam. I've seen them and helped fill them out and everything. But Pieraz-2's papers would only have, y'know, one parent because there is no dam or, for that matter, sire. Certainly the nice genetic testing people can have him blood-typed and DNA-tested for parentage verification, but I don't think that's going to make the AHA very happy even though they require it of ordinary garden-variety arabian horses. (The AHA had a freaking law suit regarding four reference horses found in the pedigrees of horses accepted as purebreds by some South American registries. See here. They take bloodlines very seriously, they do, and I don't imagine they'll be entirely thrilled with the prospect of issuing registration papers on a clone of a properly registered horse or issuing registration papers to the OFFSPRING of a clone of a properly registered horse. Pieraz's papers say G (for gelding) on them. In years past, that meant the line was done. It wasn't like you could stick the balls back on again. Now, it seems, you bloody well can. Ain't modern science wonderful?
The registerability of foals from Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion (that's apparently what they named the poor little bugger) is not an idle question. He was not particularly an inexpensive critter to produce (though if you have 50K, the nice people at Genetic Savings and Clone will be happy to make you a duplicate cat and I can't imagine a horse would cost all that fucking much more, certainly not an order of magnitude more) and he was specificially created for the sole reason of being able to breed on the genetics of Cash. No, this is not an idle question. Not at all.
They *might* allow for it -- the bloodline is what they're interested in, after all. The bloodline is still there. It's just... little, yellow, different, better. But in the end, it's still there. I'm probably hoping for too much sensibility from these people, but most breed registeries have been sensible about other stuff, like artificial insemination for horses and embryo transfer for performance mares. Many registries have accepted those changes, changes which have meant that you can register foals to a stud that's been dead for more than a year or register four or five foals to your performance mare in one year even though horses can only have one foal per year the usual way. It's POSSIBLE that they'll accept clones of performance geldings as legitimate sires. We shall, I suppose, see. (N. B. The Jockey Club registers Thoroughbred racehorses, not arabians. They are occasionally cited as a source (by some dumb-ass journalists who don't know jack about horses) as persons with something useful to contribute to this discussion. The Jockey Club has fuck-all to do with the registerability of Pieraz-2, but just as an FYI, The Jockey Club ain't in favor of unnatural reproduction. I quote directly from the rules of The Jockey Club: To be eligible for registration, a foal must be the result of a stallion’s Breeding with a broodmare (which is the physical mounting of a broodmare by a stallion with intromission of the penis and ejaculation of semen into the reproductive tract). As an aid to the Breeding, a portion of the ejaculate produced by the stallion during such mating may immediately be placed in the uterus of the broodmare being bred. A natural gestation must take place in, and delivery must be from, the body of the same broodmare in which the foal was conceived. Without limiting the above, any foal resulting from or produced by the processes of Artificial Insemination, Embryo Transfer or Transplant, Cloning or any other form of genetic manipulation not herein specified, shall not be eligible for registration.. I suspect that the position of The Jockey Club on these matters is based, partially or wholly, on keeping the price of thoroughbred horses high.)
Anyway, the wonderful world of pedigreed horses (or cows or goats or llamas or dogs or cats or whatever) is probably a good place to play-test the real-life consequences of genetic fun-and-games before we start working with people. I'm all for making genetic crap pay for itself and this is one way that it could very well carry on without needing my tax dollars, your tax dollars, or the tax dollars we could be using to build better bombs, feed the hungry, research the life cycle of the snail darter, save the trees, teach more children to read, or [insert worthwhile project here].
Once upon a time, there was a newspaper classified ad selling a grey arabian gelding named Pieraz. He was listed for five hundred dollars, about the going rate for a generic six-year-old grey arabian gelding with no particular skills in the late eighties. A lady named Valerie Kanavy bought him from the classified ad. Valerie trained Pieraz to be an endurance horse, one who competed in hundred-mile events. As it turned out, Pieraz (more popularly known as Cash) was really quite competent on the trail, able to finish a hundred mile ride in, as it turned out, world-champion fashion. Twice, in 1994 and in 1996, he was the best in the world. But, y'know, he was a gelding and that was that. Or was it?
Pieraz is still alive. He's 23 this year and, strange as it may sound, it appears that they've cloned him. Successfully, as of the end of February, 2005. Some genetics research folks over in Europe (France and Italy) managed it. Details here. For the non-husbandry-minded, the relevant thing you should be getting from this news is that a cloned Pieraz wouldn't be born gelded and therefore could sire offspring with the same genes as the twice-world-champion endurance horse.
I was kind of wondering, myself, when researchers would get done with using unknown animals for clone source material and would start using things we might fucking be interested in buying... and producing un-gelded clones of superior performance horses seemed, to my mind, one of the more lucrative avenues to pursue. There are more than a few superior performance geldings -- French Flash Hawk (better known as Bozo) dominated the barrel-racing world (5-time WPRA World Champion Barrel Horse, Five-Time AQHA/PRCA Barrel Racing Horse of the Year) in the 1990's. In the seventies, Red Rum won the Grand National three times (73, 74, 77), finished second twice (75 & 76), and remains the only horse ever to do that at Aintree. Cash was another. Now, I'm all for this as a useful and interesting development. However, what the BLOODY HELL is the AHA's position about this? (Their website was singularly uninformative -- I poked around a bit. I guess they think they've got about two years to come up with a decision on the matter before this will be a live issue.) I mean, honestly, are they going to allow the registration of foals out of registered mares and by a cloned Pieraz? How the hell...?
I mean, yeah, Pieraz has papers. (PIERAZ, AHR*250877, 28 Feb 1982) [You can look up any registered arabian horse by name on their site -- I checked. It also had the IRH (GF NILE KAIA, AHR*556789, 30 Apr 1998), who is not particularly, y'know, famous.] But... I don't think that the foal has been registered. The forms have a space for sire and dam. I've seen them and helped fill them out and everything. But Pieraz-2's papers would only have, y'know, one parent because there is no dam or, for that matter, sire. Certainly the nice genetic testing people can have him blood-typed and DNA-tested for parentage verification, but I don't think that's going to make the AHA very happy even though they require it of ordinary garden-variety arabian horses. (The AHA had a freaking law suit regarding four reference horses found in the pedigrees of horses accepted as purebreds by some South American registries. See here. They take bloodlines very seriously, they do, and I don't imagine they'll be entirely thrilled with the prospect of issuing registration papers on a clone of a properly registered horse or issuing registration papers to the OFFSPRING of a clone of a properly registered horse. Pieraz's papers say G (for gelding) on them. In years past, that meant the line was done. It wasn't like you could stick the balls back on again. Now, it seems, you bloody well can. Ain't modern science wonderful?
The registerability of foals from Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion (that's apparently what they named the poor little bugger) is not an idle question. He was not particularly an inexpensive critter to produce (though if you have 50K, the nice people at Genetic Savings and Clone will be happy to make you a duplicate cat and I can't imagine a horse would cost all that fucking much more, certainly not an order of magnitude more) and he was specificially created for the sole reason of being able to breed on the genetics of Cash. No, this is not an idle question. Not at all.
They *might* allow for it -- the bloodline is what they're interested in, after all. The bloodline is still there. It's just... little, yellow, different, better. But in the end, it's still there. I'm probably hoping for too much sensibility from these people, but most breed registeries have been sensible about other stuff, like artificial insemination for horses and embryo transfer for performance mares. Many registries have accepted those changes, changes which have meant that you can register foals to a stud that's been dead for more than a year or register four or five foals to your performance mare in one year even though horses can only have one foal per year the usual way. It's POSSIBLE that they'll accept clones of performance geldings as legitimate sires. We shall, I suppose, see. (N. B. The Jockey Club registers Thoroughbred racehorses, not arabians. They are occasionally cited as a source (by some dumb-ass journalists who don't know jack about horses) as persons with something useful to contribute to this discussion. The Jockey Club has fuck-all to do with the registerability of Pieraz-2, but just as an FYI, The Jockey Club ain't in favor of unnatural reproduction. I quote directly from the rules of The Jockey Club: To be eligible for registration, a foal must be the result of a stallion’s Breeding with a broodmare (which is the physical mounting of a broodmare by a stallion with intromission of the penis and ejaculation of semen into the reproductive tract). As an aid to the Breeding, a portion of the ejaculate produced by the stallion during such mating may immediately be placed in the uterus of the broodmare being bred. A natural gestation must take place in, and delivery must be from, the body of the same broodmare in which the foal was conceived. Without limiting the above, any foal resulting from or produced by the processes of Artificial Insemination, Embryo Transfer or Transplant, Cloning or any other form of genetic manipulation not herein specified, shall not be eligible for registration.. I suspect that the position of The Jockey Club on these matters is based, partially or wholly, on keeping the price of thoroughbred horses high.)
Anyway, the wonderful world of pedigreed horses (or cows or goats or llamas or dogs or cats or whatever) is probably a good place to play-test the real-life consequences of genetic fun-and-games before we start working with people. I'm all for making genetic crap pay for itself and this is one way that it could very well carry on without needing my tax dollars, your tax dollars, or the tax dollars we could be using to build better bombs, feed the hungry, research the life cycle of the snail darter, save the trees, teach more children to read, or [insert worthwhile project here].
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 01:53 pm (UTC)Also, the process of blastocyst/embryonic development is very complicated and, in a normal conception, genes are switched on and off again in precise sequences and stages. With clones the donor genetic material is put into a fertilized egg (from which the original nucleus has been removed). The whole thing is given an electric shock to try and reset the genes to zero and they see what happens. But, there's never a point in normal blastocyst development in which all the genes are set to zero. So even when they wind up with animals that live to adulthood, as Dolly did, they often die young of strange diseases. As Dolly did.
Also, in cloning the genes do not have their telomeres restored (the bits at the ends of the arms of the chromosomes that wear down over time, possibly forming a sort of genetic countdown timer for lifespan) and other things that normally happen with regular breeding.
Now in Pieraz-2's case, the fact that he doesn't have Pieraz-1's mitochondrial DNA isn't a huge issue. Pieraz-2 isn't being expected to run endurance races (though it would probably increase his value as stud if he demonstrated the same abilities as the original model), where mitochondrial DNA might be expected to make a difference. But a stallion doesn't pass on his mitochondria, so nothing that Pieraz-1 would have passed on has been lost in the cloning.
It would be interesting to know if the offspring of cloned animals are more normal than their cloned parents are, or if the propensity to dying young and of odd diseases, continues into the next generation.