BACKGROUND The Icelandic horse is a pristine breed of horse which has a pure gene pool established more than a thousand years ago, and is approximately the same size as living and extinct wild breeds of horses. This study was performed to compare the length of the skeletal growth period of the "primitive" Icelandic horse relative to that reported for large horse breeds developed over the recent...

ANTHONY DENT (editor), The horse through fifty centuries of civilization, London, Phaidon Press, 1974, 4to, pp. 288, illus., £8.95. For more than five thousand years until about sixty years ago, the history of the horse was the history of man. Although the dog has been man's best animal friend, the horse has been much more a part of his civilization than any other of his domesticated animals. A...

ANTHONY DENT (editor), The horse through fifty centuries of civilization, London, Phaidon Press, 1974, 4to, pp. 288, illus., £8.95. For more than five thousand years until about sixty years ago, the history of the horse was the history of man. Although the dog has been man's best animal friend, the horse has been much more a part of his civilization than any other of his domesticated animals. A...

Genetic variation contributing to the phenotypic variation was utilized in this thesis to understand the genetic background of a complex trait IBH, and to understand genetic diversity and relationships between various horse populations. IBH is the most common skin allergic disorder in horses, caused by bites of midges, predominantly Culicoides species. It affects various horse breeds worldwide....

The adrenergic receptor beta 2 (ADRB2) plays a role in various physiological responses of the muscle to exercise, such as contraction and relaxation. Given its important role in muscle function, we investigated the structure of the horse ADRB2 gene and its expression pattern after exercise to determine if it can serve as a putative biomarker for recovery. Evolutionary analyses using synonymous ...

The domestic horse is the most widely used and important stock and recreational animal, valued for its strength and endurance. The energy required by the domestic horse is mainly supplied by mitochondria via oxidative phosphorylation. Thus, selection may have played an essential role in the evolution of the horse mitochondria. Besides, demographic events also affect the DNA polymorphic pattern ...

While the importance of improving horse-related safety seems self-evident, no comprehensive study into understanding or reducing horse-related risk has been undertaken. In this paper, we discuss four dimensions of horse-related risk: the risk itself, the horse, the rider and the culture in which equestrian activities takes place. We identify how the ways in which risk is constructed in each dim...

In order to protect the genetic resource of native horse breeds, the genetic diversity of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) D-loop of three native horse breeds in western China were investigated. Forty-three 600 bp mtDNA D-loop sequences were analyzed by PCR and sequencing techniques, 33 unique haplotypes with 70 polymorphic sites were detected in these horses, which account for 11.67% of 600 bp sequen...