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By Miguel Lo Bianco and Lucila Sigal
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina’s award-winning mare Polo Pureza will have her genes, or at least most of them, live on in five genetically edited horses designed to outrun the polo legend herself.
Scientists at Argentine biotech firm Kheiron have produced the world’s first genetically edited horses using a technique called CRISPR-Cas9. The horses were born last October and November.
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“We design their genome before they are born,” said Gabriel Vichera, co-founder and scientific director of Kheiron. “We do this by using the so-called genetic scissors techniques, which are molecular tools that allow us to go to any region of the genome, make a precise cut and be able to make a change in that genome.”
Polo Pureza, whose name translates from Spanish as “Polo Purity,” was inducted into the Argentine Association of Polo Horse Breeders Hall of Fame.
Scientists took genes from Polo Pureza as the genetic base for the five horses, editing the genes to increase explosive speed while keeping the champion horse’s other qualities.
“There are certain muscle fibers that give it more explosiveness, a faster contraction, and the animal can have this greater explosive speed,” Vichera said, adding that the goal was to incorporate these genes “into a single generation in a precise manner.”
Vichera said that this means the horses comply with current Argentine regulations and do not count as genetic doping or genetically modified organisms.
“We are not inventing anything artificial, but rather we are taking that natural sequence and introducing it into another natural horse, which is what nature does, but we do it faster and more targeted,” Vichera said.
Vichera said this technique enables scientists to adjust the genome of any horse. Vichera said Kheiron is also working on modifying pigs so their organs can be compatible for transplants to humans, and on cows to give them more protein or shorter hair to withstand heat better.
(Reporting by Miguel LoBianco and Lucila Sigal; Writing by Alexander Villegas; Edited by Nicolas Misculin and Will Dunham)