Equine Genetics
A special issue of Genes (ISSN 2073-4425). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Genetics and Genomics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2019) | Viewed by 108562
Special Issue Editors
Interests: equine genetics; disease genetics; physical performance; breeding
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Horses show a remarkable phenotypic variation both between and within breeds. As flight animals and grazers, the wild ancestors of modern horses were naturally selected for speed and for the ability to traverse long distances. Since the onset of domestication, horses have been strongly selected for speed, strength, and endurance-exercise traits. The development of specific horse breeds has resulted in selection for athletic phenotypes that enable the use of horses for riding, racing, and recreation, with clear differences in morphology and behavior. Today, approximately 400 distinct horse breeds are recognized. However, the breed formation process has also enriched different horse breeds for disease mutations, and sometimes these mutations are breed specific. Disease mutations in horses offer the advantages of spontaneous disease models.
The overall goal for the equine genomics research community is to take advantage of this extensive phenotypic diversity in order to improve the health and welfare of horses. During the last 20 years or more, equine geneticists have successfully revealed molecular variants underlying meaningful equine health, appearance (e.g. size, coat colour), and performance traits. The results from many of these studies demonstrate how the study of unique phenotypes in domestic animals, such as horses, can lead to novel fundamental insights and can also help to decipher the mechanisms underlying the biological and disease processes of relevance for other species.
The development of more advanced genomic tools continues to accelerate variant mapping in equines, and traits of a complex nature can more efficiently be dissected. Deeper information on the structure and function of the equine genome generated by advanced functional annotation (transcriptomic and epigenetic levels) and cross-species sequence comparisons fascilitate insights into processes of genome function, selection, and adaptation, as well as evolution. Studying equine domestication and important genetic variants in fossil trajectories can provide unique insights into our own history. This Special Issue on equine genetics aims to present some of the latest advances in evolution and genome-to-phenome research in a non-model species of both medical and agricultural interest.
Dr. Gabriella Lindgren
Dr. Molly McCue
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- genome-to-phenome
- exercise traits
- morphologic traits
- equine genetics
- domestic horse
- disease mechanisms
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