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

[Susan Evans Garlinghouse <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

Regarding the new ability to choose for sex, we've actually been able to
do something like that for awhile, though not necessarily with 100%
accuracy (and there's no saying this technique is 100% accurate,
either).  There are various things you can do playing around with a
semen sample and/or a female in estrus to increase the odds for a
female, though not much to choose for male, but that's a whole 'nother
fairly boring discussion.

Even though it may be possible in future to choose for sex, that's a FAR
cry from being able to choose for other characteristics, like
temperament, speed, conformation, etc---those attributes are coded in
the DNA and can't be filtered out now, and I doubt if ever.  We haven't
even completely cracked DNA codes last I heard, so being able to
mix-and-match in any sort of economically feasible way is still
WAAAAAAAY down the road.

I'm also a little more conservative about the enormous impact this will
have in the animal production industry.  Yes, male dairy calves are
slaughtered because they're an excess by-product---but so are the
majority of the female calves.  Dairy cows are bred so that they will
lactate and produce milk, and although a few of the heifer calves are
raised as replacements, they are still primarily an excess by-product as
well and choosing their sex before conception won't change that.  Now if
we could get dairy cows to lactate without having to be pregnant every
year, THAT would be a big deal.  Pig producers couldn't care less for
the most part, females grow as well as the castrated male pigs, though I
suppose with a gilt you don't have to worry about having to castrate.

Just my own opinion, but I think this will be a nice toy and extra
option for horse breeders that have a good reason for wanting a mare or
a stallion colt, but for the majority of the industry, It's not going to
make any enormous changes in the World As We Know It.

Susie Wimberly wrote:
> 
> 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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