OKAY, HORSE BREEDERS, HERE'S YOUR NEWEST TECH CHALLENGE!

[Susie Wimberly <suzieqc1cr@yahoo.com>]

Dear RideCamp:

Hypothetically speaking....you own the Best Endurance Stallion in the
World!  Your Guy is the source of significant quantities of the raw
materials necessary to create a breeding program which could possibly
revolutionize your field, and NOW You the Breeder have the ability to
ABSOLUTELY control how many mares your stallion will produce!

Roll tape - three news wire pieces which absolutely WILL have an
impact on the endurance horse breeding business, and on all serious
breeding organizations which breed for performance horses [as soon as
the technology becomes commercially available].

Let's get some discussion going on what AERC ought to be doing to gear
up for a public statement, hopefully before the technology becomes
commercially available.

Topics?  What conceivable impact could this have on pricing for
breeding?  Abuses in the hands of genetic idiots (those who breed for
sheer numbers, not for quality control)?  Impact on the Gene Pool for
Arabian Horses?  Who gets to control the technology in horse breeding?
 The wealthy T-Bred consortiums?  Think about just WHO might be
calling XY, Inc. on Monday morning to offer them a lot of cash up
front, no questions asked, for the rights to their sperm sorting
technology.

Think about it, and PLEASE, PLEASE post your replies only to Ride
Camp, not to Susie.


Thursday August 13, 9:02 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: XY Inc.
World's First Sex-Selected Filly Sets Pace for Billion-Dollar Industry

FORT COLLINS, Colo., Aug. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- A potential
billion-dollar biotech industry is riding on a brand-new filly. 

Meet ``Call Me Madam,'' the first horse in the world to have her sex 
selected prior to conception via a cutting-edge cell-sorting
technology developed by XY Inc., a Fort Collins, Colo., biotech
company that 
expects to commercialize the technique in the coming years. 

The birth of Call Me Madam on Aug. 6 is a first in the horse industry
and a major breakthrough in one of the world's most promising biotech
industries - - sperm sorting, which separates sperm that carry the X 
chromosome and produce females from sperm that carry the Y chromosome
and produce males. 

``Selecting whether a horse will be female or male before it's even
conceived will revolutionize the horse industry,'' said Dr. Mervyn
Jacobson, chief executive officer of XY. 

Applications of advanced sperm-sorting for artificial insemination in
the United States horse industry alone could be in excess of $300
million a year, said Jacobson. An equivalent potential market exists in 
the U.S. cattle and pig industries. The market outside the U.S. could
more than double those projections, he added. 

Jacobson pointed out XY's sperm-sorting technology also has the
potential to annually reduce the wholesale slaughter of millions of
young animals within food and companion species throughout the world. 

In addition, Jacobson said interest exists for sperm sorting to help
increase the number of females among the world's endangered species. 

XY, which holds exclusive global rights to the sperm-sorting license
in non-human mammals, was formed as a joint venture of the Colorado
State University Research Foundation and Cytomation Inc., of Fort
Collins, Colo. 

Founded in May 1996, XY's original mission was to provide semen-sexing
services to the U.S. cattle industry. With the appointment of Jacobson
in January 1997, XY's mission expanded also to include horses, pigs
and endangered species, specifically, and all non-human mammals,
potentially. 

Call Me Madam, born on a ranch outside Fort Collins, was carried by a
mare named, Feisty, impregnated via oviductal insemination, using
sorted semen that was introduced by flank incision. 

``To produce a beautiful, live foal whose sex was predetermined 11
months earlier is a first on many fronts -- scientific, economic and
ecologic. 

``We're elated,'' said Jacobson. 

So, apparently are breeders within the lucrative horse industry, which
reported $548 million in stud fees alone in 1994. That same year,
breeders reported receiving more than $3 billion in proceeds from horse 
sales. 

``From a horse breeder's perspective, time is money,'' said Brigitte
Von Rechenberg, head of the muscular-surgical unit of the University
of Zurich, Switzerland, and owner of top-class Arabian horses. 

``A horse's gestation cycle typically is almost a year long. That's a
long and expensive wait for a foal that's the wrong sex. If breeders
can select a foal's sex, they can plan and build their business based
on 
what clients are interested in buying, breeding or raising for show.'' 

Currently, the success of in vitro embryo production in horses lags
far behind other domestic animals such as cows or pigs because of the
horse's complex reproductive biology and the incredibly high number of 
sperm -- 500 million -- needed to impregnate a mare. 

The breakthrough science of horse sperm sorting via flow cytometry was
developed by XY scientists in conjunction with three other respected
research teams at Colorado State University, the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture and Cytomation. 

USDA researchers developed and patented the technology that allows
sperm to be sorted by flow cytometry. Cytomation built the
computerized device -- MoFlo -- to speed the sorting process. Colorado
State researchers 
discovered how to make female animals pregnant with unusually low
doses of sperm. 

XY scientists perform sperm sorting, ``a living engineering process,''
according to Jacobson, that allows XY to dictate the sex of horses,
cows and other animals before artificial insemination occurs. 

XY's Director of Science George Seidel, a world-renown Colorado State
reproductive physiologist, said, ``Left to natural means, horses,
cattle or other animals typically require millions of sperm per
impregnation. 
And the sex of the resulting offspring is typically 50-50. The waste
from unwanted sexes in animal-breeding industries is enormous.'' 

For example, breeders of polo ponies and performance horses view the
``correct'' sex of their horses as a criteria essential to a winning
performance. The polo industry typically prefers female horses, which
learn more quickly and are more adept on the polo field than male
horses. 

Successful performance horses -- jumpers -- typically are male due to
their strength and muscle mass. 

``At birth, almost all polo ponies born male in South America are
regarded as no better than garbage,'' Jacobson said. ``We also know
about 10 million dairy calves annually born male are slaughtered at
birth. Not a pretty picture.'' 

Jacobson continued, ``This is truly historic. ''For 5,000 years people
throughout the world have yearned to determine the sex of their animal
herds. In relation to the horse, it took the joint collaboration of
four 
research teams to make this dream come true.`` 

SOURCE: XY Inc.


Yahoo! News AP Headlines 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday August 13 8:49 PM EDT 
Study Improves Sex-Selection Method
JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA AP Science Writer

Livestock scientists have created the world's first horse that was
deliberately selected prior to conception to be born female. 

Unlike Dolly the sheep and last month's 50 identical lab mice, the
week-old filly, named Call Me Madam, is not a clone. It has a
genetically different mother and father. 

Researchers say the reproductive method known as sperm sorting could
fine-tune livestock herds, reducing the slaughter of millions of
newborn animals by commercial operators because they turn out to be
the wrong gender and have little market value. 

The same lab method eventually might help save endangered species,
they said.  Sperm sorting previously has been successful in limited
trials using 
cattle and pigs, but it has not yet been ommercialized. Observers said
horses are reproductively more difficult, and the method would be a
breakthrough if it can be repeated. 

``It could have a significant impact on agriculture,'' said biologist
Ken White of Utah State University. ``But it's not an automatic
assumption that you can apply it to all species.'' 

However, the Colorado-based consortium that developed the designer
horse said they would not extend their reach beyond the barnyard to
include human reproductive medicine and the creation of ``designer
babies.'' 

``Some people are threatened by what they've been hearing, said Mervyn
Jacobson of XY, the joint commercial venture with Colorado State
University that bred the designer horse. 

``Sperm sorting is good for the industry and good for the animals,''
Jacobson said. ``Either you leave it to fate, or you can plan ahead in
a way that makes economic sense and minimizes the trauma to the
animals.'' 

Federal agriculture researchers originally developed a laboratory
method to separate sperm by gender. Sperm samples from various
livestock species were highlighted under magnification to spot genetic
differences. 

The Y chromosome sperm that would produce males when matched with an
egg were separated from the X chromosome sperm that would produce
females. 

The process had to be streamlined to be commercially viable. In
nature, a stallion must deliver at least 500 million sperm to
impregnate a mare. 

In Call Me Madam's case, the researchers sorted 150,000 of the X
chromosome sperm and surgically delivered them into the mare's
reproductive tract. 

They still had wait the normal 11-month gestation to see if their
method worked. 

Scientists said a improving breeding efficiencies would reduce the
number of unwanted animals. The dairy industry kills as many as 10
million unwanted male calves per year, they said. 

Among horse breeders, polo stables prefer quicker-learning females. 
Muscular males make better show jumpers. 

The firm is meeting with international conservation group to identify
an endangered mammal species that could expand its population if
sperm-sorting enabled it to produce to more females. 

Pandas in China and koalas in Australia already have received
laboratory boosts with artificial insemination. But the gender
outcomes - male or 
female - remained nature's prerogative. 

XY's license does not include human reproductive trials. Calls to
Microsort, a Virginia biotechnology firm holds the human-use rights to
their method went unreturned. 

Jacobson and others acknowledged that the sex-sorting for humans
raises ethical questions similar to the cloning controversy. 

``Certain fatal diseases run by sex, and a family might want to have a
son because they can't face the death of another daughter,'' he said.
``Under those circumstances, I think it would be appropriate.'' 

-------------------------------------------------------

P.S. There is also an ABC newswire report on this if anyone wants to
look it up.


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