An Improved Horse Reference Genome for Enhanced Biological Discovery

Horses are one of the most intensely studied domesticated animals. In the 5,500 years since domestication, humans have performed selective breading to produce a variety of horse breads with dramatically different phenotypic traits. Thus, horses are a useful model system for understanding the selective forces underlying domestication and the genetic architecture of specific morphological and behavioral traits. However, the horse genome - a necessary reagent for gene-mapping studies - is not as well assembled as most genetic model organisms.