Future of champion stallions

Future of champion stallions

In April 2005 at a press conference in Italy the first ever clone of a champion racehorse was unveiled. Italian scientists cloned Pieraz who had won two world endurance titles. Pieraz had been castrated at a young age like most successful endurance horses. The aim of this clone was to preserve Pieraz genetic heritage.
As Professor Galli leader of the project said “What we have done is to create a clone of a gelding that is a stallion, to preserve the genetic heritage of an exceptional champion. This gives us an unprecedented opportunity to breed from the best animals.” To clone Pieraz a sample of cells from the champion was taken in 2002 and stored in liquid nitrogen after an agreement between Ms Kanavy the owner and Cryozootech, a biotechnology company based near Paris. Scientists from Cryozootech and CIZ a breeding animal company then cloned Pieraz. The horse was cloned using the cell nuclear transfer technique which was developed at the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh. This is the technique which led to the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep. Although Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion the cloned foal was born perfectly healthy there is no guarantee that he will perform as well as Pieraz. If this clone appears to be able to breed it can lead to a new generation of cloned champion stallion.

References

Henderson, M. 2005, Champion the wonder clone, Times online
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article381252.ece (accessed 28/05/07)

Coghlan, A. 2005, First clone of champion racehorse revealed, New scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7265 (accessed 28/05/07)