Current Penn State research could immortalize future racehorses and could have produced offspring from horse racing greats, such as the late 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro.
By allowing for continual sperm production from the stem cells in gonads, a horse could continue to pass on its genes after castration or even death, said Jon Oatley, assistant professor of reproductive biology in the department of dairy and animal sciences.
"If you think of some of these old racehorse champions that have passed away, I don't know who out there wouldn't say, 'I would have loved to have been able to immortalize their gene line,' " Oatley said.
Five months ago, Oatley started taking stem cells from the gonads of mice and rats, culturing and freezing them, then generating sperm from those stem cells, he said.
This procedure could eventually be used in horses, Oatley added.
"It's just a matter of trying to translate it to a larger animal," he said.
The process could enable geldings -- castrated male horses -- such as the 2003 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, Funny Cide, to produce offspring by freezing their testicles in liquid nitrogen.
While Oatley said stem cells present a better opportunity to preserve the genetic line, cloning is also seen as an option for the horse industry, especially for horses that are castrated, said William Staniar, assistant professor of equine nutrition.
"If you have a gelding that turns out to be a very good athlete and you want to include that capability in the gene pool that's available for breeding, the only way to do that [currently] is to clone that animal," Staniar said.
Cloning also has the potential
to preserve genetic material and improve the gene pool, Staniar said.
Barbaro, euthanized in January, highlights the potential that cloning could have, Oatley said.
"I think where people really want cloning to go, is being able to preserve the genetic line of a dominant race horse -- for example, Barbaro," Oatley said.
But neither the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) nor The Jockey Club allows cloned horses to register and compete in their events. Additionally, the Jockey Club's restriction on artificial insemination would bar the technology Oatley is currently researching, unless the rules were to change.
Jockey Club spokesman Bob Curran, Jr. wrote in an e-mail that cloning is expressly prohibited.
"The Jockey Club ... believes that the short- and long-term welfare of the Thoroughbred breed and the sport of Thoroughbred racing are best served by the rules that we have in place," he wrote.
While AQHA allows horses bred through artificial insemination, it does not allow clones to register with the breed organization, Tom Persechino, senior director of marketing at AQHA, wrote in an e-mail.
Another problem with cloning is illustrated by three cloned mules at the University of Idaho, Oatley said.
"One of them is a very good racing mule, the other one is not good and the third one didn't pass the criteria to become trained for racing," he said. "They're all genetically identical but all three of them performed completely different."
The success of cloning racehorses, Oatley said, will never be predictable because of the role environment can play in the development of the horse.
"I don't think cloning will ever be what people think cloning will be, in that I could take identical horses, race them to each other and they would both finish at the exact same time," Oatley said. "I don't care how much you try to manipulate nature, it will never happen that way."
