At. Bowling et al., VERIFICATION OF HORSE MATERNAL LINEAGE BASED ON DERIVED MITOCHONDRIAL-DNA SEQUENCE, Journal of animal breeding and genetics, 115(5), 1998, pp. 351-355
Extensive pedigree records in stud books characterize many horse breed
s and are a resource for scientific studies, for example testing the c
onservation of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) nucleotide sequence through e
xtended generations. This study showed that even without access to bio
logical material from the horses in question, analysis of mtDNA sequen
ce in tail-female relatives can be used to derive haplotypes and test
alternative dam possibilities. DNA sequence of the D-loop hypervariabl
e region was obtained from fragments generated by polymerase chain rea
ction (PCR) amplification of mtDNA from peripheral blood samples. PCR
primers for the hyperviable region of the D-loop between tRNA(Pro) and
the large central conserved sequence block were designed based on pub
lished horse sequence. Horses tracing to the same tail-female lines ha
d identical DNA sequences, despite separation from common maternal anc
estors by more than 80 years and by pedigree loops of up to 17 generat
ions.