Investigating the Arabian Horse Genome

ancestral homeland for centuries with some modern lineages drawn strictly from these smaller genetic pools giving the breed a reputation for inbred disorders. While this was true for some groups they tested Brooks noted they also found remarkable diversity when considering the breed as a whole.
Brooks contrasted the discovery of more diverse populations with the samples they received from racing Arabians. Another longstanding myth says that the Arabian contributed genetically to the modern Thoroughbred but the racing Arabians DNA told a different story. The research team found little influence of the Arabian in the modern Thoroughbreds DNA.
What we found in these samples was not that much Arabian ancestry was part of the Thoroughbred line but the opposite that Thoroughbred DNA exists in most of the modern racing Arabian lines indicating a more recent interbreeding within this group Brooks said. I cant speculate on the how or why but this is clearly the story the DNA is telling us.
Another implication of this study Brooks said is the potential to identify the genetic regions that determine some of the Arabians unique traits like their facial profile. This could be expanded to identify the marker for other horse breeds head shapes for example.
The study has a long list of coauthors with contributors from the University of Tehran Iran Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar the University of Kentucky the University of Agriculture in Kraków Poland the Hong Kong Jockey Club the Equine Veterinary Medical Center in Doha Qatar and the University of Veterinary
Medicine Vienna Austria. Elissa Cosgrove from the Clark lab and Raheleh Sadeghi a visiting scientist from Iran in the Antczak lab shared first coauthorship of the study.