Researchers Achieve Cloning First
The delivery of the foal highlights Texas A&M’s long tradition of leading science in equine reproduction, and has been a great experience for the owner of the new foal.
“I’ve always liked having three horses to ride,” said Kit Knotts, proud owner of Mouse, the foal that represents the successful cloning efforts. “I called and emailed breeders to spread the word that I was looking. Everything I could turn up was either too small, too young, too old, not quite sound, etc. I realized I didn’t want just another horse to have another body in the barn, I wanted another Marc.”
Knotts’ efforts to find a horse that had the same qualities as her prized Lippizan stallion, Marc, (Pluto III Marcella) would lead her to Texas A&M University and equine reproduction expert, Dr. Katrin Hinrichs.
Dr. Hinrichs’ lab is noted for achieving the first cloned foal in North America, and the third in the world with Paris Texas, who arrived in 2005. The lab has since produced twelve cloned foals. Currently there are only three labs in the world that have reported the successful birth of cloned horses – Texas A&M University, Viagen (a commercial venture based in Texas), and the lab of Dr. Cesare Galli, in Italy.
“We have worked on this clone for about two years,” said Hinrichs, a professor in the Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology. “This is actually our first foal produced using oocytes, or egg cells, from live mares. We recovered the oocytes from our herd of research mares using the same method used to recover eggs from women for in vitro fertilization. We used the oocytes for the cloning process, which made it difficult as we had very few to work with at any one time. During the cloning process, we tested a new technique that has been reported in mice to decrease birthing problems. Mrs. Knotts has been very supportive of our efforts to clone her horse, and has even named the foal ‘Mouse’ in honor of the research that produced him.”
The process began with a biopsy of skin cells from Marc, the horse to be cloned. Through the cloning process using oocytes recovered from a live mare, viable embryos were developed and sent to Hartman Equine Reproduction Center, an embryo transfer facility in North Texas which works closely with Hinrichs’ lab, for transfer into surrogate mares. Minnie, the mare carrying Mouse, stayed in North Texas for approximately 200 days, then was sent to her new home in Florida.
“I have become really interested in the science involved,” notes Knotts. “Dr. Hinrichs has been wonderful about keeping me up on what is going on in the lab and feeds my interest by explaining things in terms I can largely understand. I am very proud of the contributions our project has made to the body of knowledge about cloning, which benefits far more areas of equine reproduction than most realize.”
With Strangles Awareness Week just around the corner (5-11 May), vets are being encouraged to share a survey about the disease with their horse-owning clients.
