Tack Box Talk
Tack Box Talk
Sane and Sound: The story of a equine geneticists goal to build a better horse
Dr. Samantha Brooks, world renown equine geneticist from the University of Florida joins us for a free ranging talk on how horses get their markers, how we might someday be able to breed for temperament and how even your temperament may predict how you experience pain. While we never really pick a topic, this is a great discussion on how gene's influence your horse's behavior.
Kris Hiney: So I think I wanted just to do it broadly and try to relate, maybe like, where we at with horses compared to everybody getting their dogs, DNA, to see if, like his cousin lives down the road or like
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Kris Hiney: yes, or where are we? Do people need to pay money, and I don't wanna get off the track of yours. But I now like now they have, like you could get their microbiome tested, and you could do this like? Are we anywhere where all of this is
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Kris Hiney: helpful
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Kris Hiney: for the average horse owner.
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Samantha Brooks: For the average horse center. Okay.
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Kris Hiney: Is that kinda.
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Samantha Brooks: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me think, just 1 s, because I
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Samantha Brooks: just gave this talk
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Samantha Brooks: a couple weeks ago.
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Samantha Brooks: And now I'm trying to remember. What did I talk about? But the whole topic was, I don't remember my own talk. But, this happens to me all the time. It's really fun. My like, my students bring me stuff. And they're like, look at this paper. And I'm like, Oh, that's really good! Who wrote it?
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Samantha Brooks: And then.
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Kris Hiney: And then it's you.
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Samantha Brooks: So I get to. It's fun. I get to rediscover my science all the time, cause I forget it. Now.
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Samantha Brooks: Alright. So the 3 topics that I picked
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Samantha Brooks: in stock horses was Pssm. One. And I just this morning took a look at the raw data. So we just did a
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Samantha Brooks: genetics topics survey of the general public. And that that's what I'm presenting on Sunday. So I was like, Oh, I guess I should probably do some, at least some summary statistics.
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Samantha Brooks: And we've got about 500 respondents, and about 200 of those were stock horse people, and I was really surprised to see that they are very concerned with PSSm. Type one and hYPP, and I don't know. I guess I thought hip was old news now, but
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Samantha Brooks: No, not 2,009, 2,000, and
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Samantha Brooks: it was 25 years after the discovery of the Allele. But in those 25 years it went from an allele frequency or an affected frequency of something like 20% to 59% in the halter horses.
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Samantha Brooks: So yes, they definitely use the tool in the wrong way. I guess I'm shocked that the
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Samantha Brooks: selective advantage is so strong.
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Kris Hiney: It is. They're freaks like, I, I guess. Have you been in a halter barn?
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Samantha Brooks: Oh, yes, I like sides of beef, sides of beef, and.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah.
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Samantha Brooks: We have this argument in our program all the time about marketability of stock horses. And you know, we everybody's got Ocd, we're no, we're no difference. And I'm like, Well, this is a solvable problem. Stop feeding them.
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Samantha Brooks: And and they're like, Yeah, if we do, if they're too small, they won't bring a good enough price when we go to auction them off. And I'm like, Well, there's you know what they look like, and if they're gonna anyways. And if they're gonna function. So yeah, it's freakish. So I guess that's it is. It's is that it's the the moth to the flame effect. But I'm surprised. So our question was worded
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Samantha Brooks: of these genetic conditions, which one is which oh, which it's like, which one is most concerning.
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Kris Hiney: And.
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Samantha Brooks: And I thought concerning would mean things that they felt were dangerous in some way. But I guess that's not. Guess they don't feel it's dangerous, because
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Samantha Brooks: anyways, science is easy. People are hard. Yeah.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah. The ethics of what one does with the science is,
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Samantha Brooks: Right? Yeah, yeah, this is the thing. We made a nice test. But okay, so so, stock horse wise, we can certainly talk about hypp if you want, but pssm, one is the one that I chose.
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Samantha Brooks: for a couple of reasons, and then for sport, horses, race horses truthfully, but also sport horses to some degree.
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Samantha Brooks: There's a genetic region for height
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Samantha Brooks: that is also important for development of OCD. And development of roaring, both of which are
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Samantha Brooks: pretty expensive and career ending even for a trail horse bad. Ocd. Is going to turn into hock arthritis, which is going to turn into injections or else walk
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Samantha Brooks: trot only, and
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Samantha Brooks: those kind of things. And then for sport, horse type
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Samantha Brooks: people I was talking about fragile, foal syndrome, which is now a big advantage. Well, there's several papers showing. It's it's advantageous for dressage. And so it's going to be the same situation as HYPP.
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Samantha Brooks: where 2 copies you're pretty much dead.
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Samantha Brooks: One copy everybody wants to breed for, and the Allele frequency is gonna start to sky Skyrocket right? And
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Samantha Brooks: the Pssm. And that height locus
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Samantha Brooks: are both kind of nice, because they have dietary management strategies to help to mitigate the negatives. And so, even if you have a
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Samantha Brooks: a fairly mature horse.
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Samantha Brooks: You know they carry. PSSM, you can make some fairly simple management changes to try to avoid
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Samantha Brooks: ending up with an episode of of PSSM. Which can be painful and expensive, and in some cases life-threatening. So
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Samantha Brooks: that was my tack previously was that
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Samantha Brooks: even if you have an adult horse and you're not a breeder.
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Samantha Brooks: You can learn some things about your horse to change the things that you to change the way you handle it day to day.
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Samantha Brooks: That will
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Samantha Brooks: improve your horse's performance and wellbeing, and hopefully also your
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Samantha Brooks: wallet.
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Samantha Brooks: your economic sustainability.
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Kris Hiney: Gotcha gotcha.
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Samantha Brooks: So to speak. But there's a lot of topics we could go to on this. But yeah, why should the everyday? And then, of course there are ancestry products for the horse that are just as good, if not better, than what's in the dog. It's just.
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Samantha Brooks: I don't think people know, to look for it.
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Kris Hiney: and is it helpful? Right? Is it.
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Samantha Brooks: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And is it helpful?
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Kris Hiney: Cause, I think, yeah, I mean, the difference is, so many people have mixed free dogs, which I don't think there's a plethora of people getting mixed horses just.
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Samantha Brooks: Well, what is a breed, though? Here's the whole. Now we get into philosophy. What is a breed? Because
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Kris Hiney: Association tells you it is.
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Samantha Brooks: Yeah, it's a piece of paper. Yeah, breed is as heritable as the paper. That darn pedigree is printed on.
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Samantha Brooks: It really is so so you can have something that's registered. You don't really know what it is.
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Samantha Brooks: I have a great example for that. My daughter's horse came to us with no papers. After going through 5 owners at some point we heard a rumor. She went through an auction in Texas. She went through several sets of hands, and we got her, and she's a cute little bay thing with a star, and looks vaguely stock horse to me. But she has these lovely, beautiful kind of hazel colored eyes. And so, me being a geneticist, I'm like, Oh, this is curious.
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Samantha Brooks: So I knew. I know there's a locus for he, for light colored eyes. They call it a tiger eye, and I thought, Well, we should test for that. So while I was doing that, I said, well, we're just going to do. We know nothing about her. So we did a full ancestry panel. We probably should just.
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Samantha Brooks: I don't know. You can edit this right. We did a full ancestry panel on her. And I did comprehensive genetic testing, because I didn't know enough about her
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Samantha Brooks: breed, so to speak.
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Samantha Brooks: to decide
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Samantha Brooks: what
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Samantha Brooks: targeted panel would be appropriate. And
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Samantha Brooks: these days genetic testing is cheaper if you buy in bulk. So I was like, just do the whole thing.
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Samantha Brooks: Well, it turns out she is
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Samantha Brooks: probably a stock horse based on her ancestry. She genetically, is half thoroughbred, full 50%. So
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Samantha Brooks: typical for a like a performance type, quarter horse
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Samantha Brooks: for a pleasure type, quarter horse or stock horse
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Samantha Brooks: type group, including the paint horses. And when we looked at her genetic testing for known for known traits. She didn't have anything for light colored eyes. What she did have was a frame overo Allele.
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Kris Hiney: And.
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Samantha Brooks: She's Bay with
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Samantha Brooks: a small star and a small sock.
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Samantha Brooks: No, no bright colored markings really whatsoever.
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Samantha Brooks: for us. That's valuable information to know my my daughter begs me to breathe the mayor every year. I don't know that I will, because I'm not made of money, but
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Samantha Brooks: she is such a spectacular 4 h horse, just a trooper, and knock on wood sound as dollar.
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Samantha Brooks: So you know a as a genetic system like she's got some merit but if we were to have chosen, say, a nice paint horse stallion, and weren't careful, we could have ended up with in a in a very lethal white syndrome full, who would die shortly after birth, and it would have no clue to that. That was a possibility, because she does not carry the overt phenotype
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Samantha Brooks: of of an of of a paint horse. So
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Samantha Brooks: my! Based on those clues. I suspect she was bred in a paint horse program, and.
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Kris Hiney: And be.
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Samantha Brooks: Because.
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Kris Hiney: She did.
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Samantha Brooks: Yeah, she did not have qualifying white enough now. They'll accept genetic testing, but she's in her 15 or so years old
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Samantha Brooks: back. Then she couldn't have gotten registered, based solely on a genetic test. So she probably got discarded as a solid paint.
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Samantha Brooks: and that fills us in a little bit about, you know. Just so. We know a little bit more about this horse that we spend so much time with, and
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Samantha Brooks: fortunately she does not have an HYPP. Or a Pssm. Or
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Samantha Brooks: something health-wise, that that could be potentially alarming. But that that frame of arrow is is definitely a. It's a curiosity, and and if I win the lottery tomorrow and decide to go into horse breeding and decide to breed her, I definitely know a little bit better about how I should.
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Samantha Brooks: I should target that.
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Kris Hiney: So as the geneticist. Why, what controls, whether that overo gene is expressed or not expressed.
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Samantha Brooks: Well, ask mother nature, cause.
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Kris Hiney: It is not.
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Samantha Brooks: Telling.
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Kris Hiney: No, I'm asking Dr. Samantha Brooks, equine, genetic expert.
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Samantha Brooks: Oh, the expert, the expert!
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Samantha Brooks: Alright! Well, you know. So during development, your Milano cytes migrate in that tiny little embroyo they migrate from a population of stem cells that evolves along what we call the neural crest which lies where the spinal column eventually will form, and in some ways. It makes sense, right? Cause. Neurons are these cells that have lots of branches
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Samantha Brooks: and melanocytes or cells that have lots of branches. They're little factories that make pigment, and then they ship that pigment out along the branches, out to the the follicles that are gonna make hair and the skin cells that that need pigment.
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Samantha Brooks: So they start just along the top line of the embryo, and then they respond to migratory signals. These chemical roadmaps that are
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Samantha Brooks: secreted by the so the destination cells and the melanocytes. Actually, I've got a great video of melanocytes labeled with fluorescent dye on a little mouse embryo. But they literally flow out and around the body of the embryo to get to their final location.
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Samantha Brooks: So many things can disrupt those chemical signals in lots of horses, for both genetic and random reasons. They don't make it all the way to the ends of those limbs, and we end up with socks right? And in an embryo the nose is actually pretty far to get to, too. So you end up with a blaze. Those markings are common in those locations, because in the developing embryo they're actually quite far from from where the melanocytes
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Samantha Brooks: start their journey.
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Samantha Brooks: So if you, if you disrupt those chemical signals in a number of different ways. You end up with these different sort of flow patterns where the migration has been disrupted at certain periods of time.
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Samantha Brooks: Things like Tobiano get these sort of big puddles in one place or another, and frame of arrow is kind of odd, because it seems like they kind of start, and then they kind of get distracted and and don't seem to finish out and and don't both flow, and then fill in across the the skin surface. So to keep with that analogy, if you think about like, if you were to take a bucket of paint and throw it out across the concrete floor.
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Samantha Brooks: Even if you had 10 opportunities to do this. This sounds like a very therapeutic, asmr kind of activity, right? But if you had 10 opportunities to throw that bucket of paint
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Samantha Brooks: every time you do it. It's it's not going to be the same right? So so each time you have a foal, and these pigment cells begin to migrate. It's going to be a slightly unique pattern in that animal.
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Samantha Brooks: So as it turns out in frame overo. If we set a human defined threshold, like like the traditional limits for white markings in the American Paint Horse.
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Samantha Brooks: that just by random chance, about 9 out of 10 horses that carry one frame of arrow. Allele will make it beyond that threshold, and we'll have some fairly dramatic and exciting markings on them. But one out of every 10 times. So 10% of frame of overo horses do not have markings that reach that threshold, and many of them have
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Samantha Brooks: very plain markings like our little mare. And it it's just, you know, it's just part of that, that mystery that is a Mother nature and that random game of chance that sometimes they make it, sometimes they don't. Now
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Samantha Brooks: other patterns like Tobiano. You can think about it. Tobiano just has a bigger market of paint to start with, right? So
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Samantha Brooks: something around 99% of Tobiano horses will make it beyond that threshold. But there are a very small proportion of even Tobiano horses who carry one allele
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Samantha Brooks: that don't have markings that would be overtly recognizable as characteristic of of Tobiano. We call those Crypto Tobiano, sometimes because they are sort of surprising when they happen. But it's all part of that normal bell curve distribution. Right? So among those overos, 10% will be really spectacular
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Samantha Brooks: white markings that are very dramatic, and 10% will be fairly plainly marked, and most of them fall in sort of that average bin
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Samantha Brooks: of markings.
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Kris Hiney: So would we am I correct? Is that epigenetics, or is it not? So like, maybe we'll try to explain. There's your genetics that like that that doesn't change right? And then there's like all these other things that happen that affect how your genes are expressed. So is that
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Kris Hiney: part of that.
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Samantha Brooks: Right.
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Kris Hiney: And I misrepresent.
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Samantha Brooks: No, no, it it can be part of. It's just random chance.
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Samantha Brooks: Part of it is that basket. Of all the other things that can can alter genetics. So those can include influences from other genes. So gene by gene interactions, influences from the environment
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Samantha Brooks: and then epigenetics itself are regulatory changes that are carried on the DNA that are added in response to certain environmental triggers, but particularly during very critical periods, right around fertilization and an early embryonic development. So that's epigenetics, or these
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Samantha Brooks: changes in the way the DNA is packaged to try to prepare that embryo for a life that might be somewhat challenging.
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Samantha Brooks: So there are gene by gene interactions for things even as simple as coat color and white spotting the easiest one to talk about is chestnut versus, not chestnut.
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Samantha Brooks: So if you look at patterns like Tobiano and fame overo
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Samantha Brooks: both of them, the horses will statistically, significantly, have more white markings. If they are on a
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Samantha Brooks: a chestnut base coat color than if they're on a bay or black base coat color. And the biological reasoning for that is that chestnut itself results from a genetic alteration that disrupts the function of a switch called MC one r.
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Samantha Brooks: and that switch turns on the ability to make black pigment, and when it's defective it's stuck in the off position. So our chestnut horses have a slightly defective black pigment on switch.
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Samantha Brooks: That switch is also important for cell signaling. And so in mice and rats and humans in horses. If you take those pigment cells that have a defective switch and put them into culture. They're kind of lazy pigment cells. The the chestnut pigment cells are just not as prolific for
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Samantha Brooks: increasing their population and growing in a dish, and all those those kind of activities. So it makes sense that that after they make their migration, those chestnut pigment cells are a little bit lazy, so they don't. They don't multiply as fast. They don't cover the horses completely. And so chestnut plus mini white spotting patterns equals more white spottings than your average horse.
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Samantha Brooks: Okay? And then there, there could be environmental things shown gene by environment. It's not well documented in verses, but it is well documented in mice
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Samantha Brooks: that another nutritional impact is methionine, which is important in the pathway for making pigment.
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Samantha Brooks: So in mice, if you supplement methionine and certain genetic backgrounds to the the mama mouse. The baby mice that are growing in utero will experience
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Samantha Brooks: changes in their coat color that will last throughout the rest of the life of the little baby mouse. They're they're really cute, because if if they on one side of the dietary spectrum, they get these puffy little orange chestnut mice we caught we call little pumpkin mice, cause they were so cute, and and then, with the right amount of supplementation, you get dark coated, kind of like, almost like bay colored mice that are very thin and lean so
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Samantha Brooks: that nutritional impact, probably through epigenetics and the environmental impact acting through epigenetics, changes the programming for genes that are important both for pigmentation and for metabolism.
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Samantha Brooks: There's many, many different mechanisms that will alter gene regulation, most of which we've never had the opportunity to properly study in the in the horse.
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Samantha Brooks: so there! It's complicated. The the expert says it's complicated.
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Kris Hiney: That's fine, like, I think that that actually is, is super important for people that are breeding their horses because they need to know that right? So that example of that solid Bay Mare like you need to know, or why. Sometimes you get this surprise like what the heck? Where did these colors come from right. They were hiding on that bell curve. I guess.
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Samantha Brooks: Right? Yeah, absolutely. They can hide on the bell curve for sure. And then you can have gene by gene interactions that will hide some of these phenotypes that can come out. You know I get people who aren't that excited about genetics will tell me. Well, I don't want to do it, because I think horse breeding is an art, and I feel like if I you know, if I do, the genetics is gonna take all the fun out of it. And and first of all, I congratulate them on being independently wealthy, because
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Samantha Brooks: many of us breed horses as a business, and so we need to be a little bit. If we're going to survive as a business, we have no choice but to be more strategic about it. But then, second of all I say, you know, even with the best planning, even if you very carefully pick those genotypes and sire and dam, it's still a flip of the coin as to which alleles that baby gets so there will always be surprises, despite all of our best laid plans. So
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Samantha Brooks: genetics will never take the fun or challenge completely out of horse breeding. It just lets us be a little more strategic about it.
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Kris Hiney: Right. And I think you know what in the horse industry, maybe what's frustrating for people. One is, we're probably not looking for that.
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Kris Hiney: The traits that are as heritable as in other like milk production. And, rate of gain, we just don't have these measurable concrete things right? That like, if you're a winner or a loser. There's a lot that goes into it versus a measurement that a whole bunch of researchers can take on a population over time. Isn't that. What kind of murk murkeys us up a bit.
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Samantha Brooks: Yeah, you know, that is a that is a huge challenge for us right now. And it's not that I think it's
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Samantha Brooks: it's not doable as much as we simply don't have the the tools or the industry-wide agreement. I mean.
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Samantha Brooks: most dairy men will agree. A cow needs to make milk, you know. Then you can have discussions about somatic cell count, or about milk. Fat? Yes, but most of them agree. They need to make milk
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Samantha Brooks: when it comes to horses. It's hard to get 3 horse people in a room and get them all to agree about what's the most valuable thing in horses. But typically those are hard things to measure things like performance. They are, they are difficult, they are multifactorial. They have huge influences due to environment, but we know it is in part genetic.
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Samantha Brooks: A draft horse is not going to necessarily win the triple crown, but by the same token, Thoroughbred horse is not gonna survive long pulling a plow. So we know that we as as humans have shaped the genetics of these breeds to alter performance, we can do it. So there are genes.
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Samantha Brooks: There definitely are genes involved. Right? So part of what I've done in my research program lately is is is
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Samantha Brooks: as we've had to sort of work a little bit more strategically because of the severe lack of research funding right now.
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Samantha Brooks: I've decided you know what I'm I'm not. I'm not so fascinated with working on genetic diseases, because there's always another one of those.
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Samantha Brooks: There's always another one of those to study. So at the moment we are focused on developing new ways to measure the 2 traits that I decided were most important to horse owners. And I got to decide, because, you know.
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Kris Hiney: Yours right? I choose.
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Samantha Brooks: That's right. I choose. But I think I chose pretty good because I decided, broadly speaking, we're focusing. The 2 traits are sane and sound.
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Samantha Brooks: And it's just that it's just that simple, right? So we developed a behavioral assay to look at startle response. So that initial subconscious reaction that can trigger fear related behaviors and horses, and anyone who's a horse person has been subject to the fear plus gravity effect which ends up with
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Samantha Brooks: rider on the ground so, or rider getting knocked down, or a driven horse taking off at the cart, leaving Driver behind.
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Samantha Brooks: So most people agree that that that's a pretty important trait to focus on. So what is a sound, or what is a sane mind? And how does it work? And and we focus on the reflexive part, because that's the easiest corner to work
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Samantha Brooks: and then soundness. So we were starting to use some AI tools to try to track locomotion, because when we were asking about locomotor traits as they related to performance.
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Samantha Brooks: There were just simply no tools available to us, even even in in clinical equine, medicine.
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Samantha Brooks: and orthopedics.
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Samantha Brooks: The best tool we have right now for detecting
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Samantha Brooks: changes in limb function is still
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Samantha Brooks: the human eye, which is not very sensitive, not very repeatable, and subject to all sorts of of bias. So
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Samantha Brooks: yeah.
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Kris Hiney: I think there's a new tool coming, though that's better than maybe the lameness locator that is hopefully in the works. You're tied with that.
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Samantha Brooks: No? Well, there's a commercial. Yeah. There's a commercial activity in Europe.
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Samantha Brooks: That has started to work on a cell phone app, which I I think, as terms of an idea is a great idea. They I'm not sure their approach is necessarily the right one. We're going a different angle on that.
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Samantha Brooks: We are using all free type software applications so freely available software applications
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Samantha Brooks: and reinventing the wheel, so to speak. So rather than relying on the characteristics that the human eye
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Samantha Brooks: typically uses. We are going straight for the quantitative measures, things like joint range of motion. And how much time that foot spends on the ground. It's it's a harder road, to hoe to just discard the adaptive
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Samantha Brooks: characteristics that we have used as humans. But the the point of using something like a camera or a cell phone is that it is recordable. So 100 reevaluatable can be repeatable in the right set of hands, and it works at 120 frames per second. Human eye cannot see that fast. So we're we're gonna try to reinvent the wheel on that, and see see where it goes.
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Kris Hiney: So I have a question on the on the the behavior side. So
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Kris Hiney: anybody that listens to the podcast knows that I'm also a dog nut. So there have been. I'm sure you're familiar with all the dog genetic stuff, too, because it gets around. So the big controversy one is like this
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Kris Hiney: is behavior genetic. And so like the breed predictability. Because I I I hear it all the time right? So that the breed does not predict behavior at all, every individual is an individual. And I'm gonna I'm gonna let you kind of. I'm gonna give my little 2 cents and then ask you how you think about it. But to me
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Kris Hiney: it is predictive. Right? So the breed what you've genetically selected for is predictive of a lot of things. So
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Kris Hiney: where we at with horses is that a factor, or are we still? Every individual is an individual.
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Samantha Brooks: Yeah, well, I'll tell you. This debate is not unique to horses and dogs. I was just reviewing some literature and human psychology yesterday for some grant writing that I'm doing.
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Samantha Brooks: And you know, they are just coming around to this this concept that there is more
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Samantha Brooks: to the relationship between genetics and what we call temperament. So so, your temperament being sort of your baseline level of sensitivity and reactivity
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Samantha Brooks: than we ever previously appreciated, because in many of these studies they would often ignore things like environmental and developmental factors. Right? But if you conduct a thorough enough study to look at things like the environment.
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Samantha Brooks: All of a sudden you start to realize, hey, wait a minute. Genetics was actually underpinning a lot of this in in human psychology, where it becomes very interesting is we looked at 2 studies, one looking at at cardiovascular disease, now 3, actually one at cardiovascular disease, one at Alzheimer's disease, and one at Osteoarthritis
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Samantha Brooks: and for the 2 disease States. Having a underlying temperament that was more
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Samantha Brooks: sensitive and prone to anxiety, was also a very significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease, and when it came to osteoarthritis, the level of of limb function, and of that patient's perceived pain was quite a bit higher in underlying temperament styles that were more sensitive and prone to prone to anxiety.
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Samantha Brooks: So so when it comes to horses and dogs, we know there are a couple, a couple of of well known underlying genetic alleles that do
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Samantha Brooks: influence specific tendencies, but across breeds the theme tends to be that
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Samantha Brooks: genetics can set up
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Samantha Brooks: a a heritable temperament.
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Samantha Brooks: an underlying sort of
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Samantha Brooks: foundation that
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Samantha Brooks: will sort of dictate
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Samantha Brooks: under controlled circumstances what your reflexive actions are likely to be.
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Samantha Brooks: and then you can layer on top of that.
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Samantha Brooks: Early life, developmental and learning experiences so particularly like our in year experiences even and then. And then there's a lot that can be can be learned during infancy. And then on top of that, the influence of environment. So are you in a very stressful situation versus are you in a very supportive
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Samantha Brooks: type of environment.
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Samantha Brooks: and that they got those sort of 3 layers of the cake as what's really shaping what we perceive as animal owners and as fellow humans as that day to day behavior. And I think because of the 2 layers on top of it, genetics gets a little bit overlooked these days, and we thought, Oh, it's all has to do with.
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Samantha Brooks: You know what you've learned and and the situation you're in, and that's not necessarily true. Your your default programming is largely genetic, and it gets altered based on those 2 terms.
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Kris Hiney: So it'd be like the genetics is actually the cake. And then all those decorations they put on top and put the fondant on.
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Samantha Brooks: Yeah, right? Right? Yeah. So you walk up and you take a slice of white cake, you think, oh, this will be great. It'll be vanilla, and then you cut it open. You're like, Oh, never mind, is chocolate, you know. Yeah, that's that could be a good. It could be a good analogy. So specifically, in some preliminary data we presented at a meeting a couple of years ago, my Phd student, who is still we conduct this behavioral experiment every single year with our Uf. Full crop. So we've done it for 10 years. I'll probably have to do it for another 10 years before we get
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Samantha Brooks: full a full sample size we can analyze. But when she looked at the heritability, so the proportion of a given trait due to genetics just for that initial spook response. So we take our baby horses and we take an automatic umbrella and we pop it open at them.
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Samantha Brooks: and fun ensues. Right? But when we look at the first 3 s, so
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Samantha Brooks: did they did they react strongly to the umbrella or not
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Samantha Brooks: in her numbers. 2 thirds of that was genetics.
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Samantha Brooks: Pretty pretty high.
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Samantha Brooks: The interesting thing is is that when we look at the later behaviors like, did they spin and run? Did they stand nearby, chew a couple times and go back to eating.
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Samantha Brooks: Those later behaviors. The heritability drops off very, very quickly. So so it sets up this really elegant solution for me, for the average horse owner. And that, let's say you're going to buy a new horse, or you're you know you're looking for a horse for your daughter, or you're trying to decide what to do with a problematic horse. Should you send them to the trainer?
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Samantha Brooks: If we can identify those reactivity genes early on. So is, are they going to react? Are they not? Gonna well, if they're not gonna react, you probably don't want to turn them into a racehorse or barrel racer, or a cutting horse, because
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Samantha Brooks: they may not have the quick reflexes you want, but they could be a great 4 H horse right? And then in among those who are reactive type, then we know that environment and learned experience are going to be key. So I might a target that horse potentially for the professional who wants super quick reflexes. And B, I'm going to be especially cautious on how I train that animal, and because I know that those later gross motor behaviors had fairly low heritability.
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Samantha Brooks: I also know that I have a really great chance to be able to to
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Samantha Brooks: influence that horse's behavior through
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Samantha Brooks: targeted strategic training approaches.
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Kris Hiney: So, and and I don't wanna maybe extrapolate too much. But this is this is fun for me, cause I do really love the behavior side. So a. And I've always said, you know, there's certain training practices that in some horses like, essentially.
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Kris Hiney: you know, when they're desensitizing them, and and the ones you do it the wrong way. Right? So to me, those ones that have
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Kris Hiney: the look that higher, startle response
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Kris Hiney: tend to be the ones that retain fear memories
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Kris Hiney: more so, and are not good candidates for some, and that's where sometimes they sort a little bit along some genetic lines that I've been a believer of no, it. This is not a one fit. One. Size fits all because there's something unique about those horses, about how they
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Kris Hiney: then retain learning. Am I making too much out of this from that little bit? If there's a genetic piece to that startle response.
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Samantha Brooks: Alright. Well, I I am not a neuroscientist. But I do collaborate with them a lot, because I I really want to find a way to study these traits more closely. But yes, memories are are laid down
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Samantha Brooks: very effectively when they are associated with a strong emotional response and emotional responses typically coming from the amygdala in the brain. Right? So if you've got this horse, who has that reactive temperament type
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Samantha Brooks: and they get set off by, you know the wind blow. I'll tell you, I went on. A trail ride the other day, and my neighbor had put a bunch of feed sacks in the trash can to be picked up, and one of them had gotten loose, and my rock solid eventer, who never spooks anything. One of those feedbags caught the wind, and flipped up like right in front of us, like one of those clowns in the funhouse
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Samantha Brooks: at the fair.
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Samantha Brooks: And bless his heart, you know, he, we both had a I don't think it scared me more, and it scared him. But you have an unexpected reaction right? And if that in some horses is accompanied by that negative emotional
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Samantha Brooks: outpouring, so to speak. It's gonna be more likely to be held in memory because because of the tie to emotion into the activation and the amyg and the amygdala.
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Samantha Brooks: That means, yeah. You do have to be more careful with them, right? Because if they're going to be more likely to be triggered into an emotional response. You know you're going to be laying down some longer term
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Samantha Brooks: sort of effects than maybe with another horse and on the flip side. If they associate you personally with positive experiences and a positive emotional state, then they might form a more indelible bond with you as a handler, and might retain some of those skills that they learn while you're they're in a positive training environment
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Samantha Brooks: much longer than a horse who found the whole thing to be very blase. Right?
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Samantha Brooks: It's with great power comes great responsibility.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, no, that's I just think this is super cool, because you're saying the science supports. What a a lot of hopefully good horsemen have been like, know those sensitive ones. You need to treat differently. But like there's legit reasons why that we need to do that and appreciate
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Kris Hiney: literally the genetic background of that animal. And when you just said, like those more amygdala driven like I own them. An emo, an amygdala amygdala! There we go. I know what the word.
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Samantha Brooks: That brain part back there. Yeah.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, that little nut back there. I have an amygdala driven dog right? And so they are very different. Doesn't mean they're not trainable. But, man, you just gotta do things a little bit more
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Kris Hiney: carefully.
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Samantha Brooks: Right? Right? You do. You do. And you do for the behavioral reasons. And I think, as we have recently shown in humans, and I think, will show in horses. You need to do it for health reasons as well. Right like you know the behavior part, so can you. Can your horse do his job day to day, and then can you afford to keep him without having to have the ved out every other day and write a whole bunch of checks. Yeah, so it makes sense to really to pay attention to these things. They they're tough questions, like, when I'm writing a Grant
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Samantha Brooks: Grant agencies are tend to be more interested in something they could say, put in a syringe and use tomorrow.
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Kris Hiney: Hmm sure.
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Samantha Brooks: Shortsighted the industry as a whole. They're like, yes. What am I gonna do about my my horse? You know my fools that have rotococcus this season?
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Kris Hiney: Yeah.
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Samantha Brooks: And I'm like, I know. Oh, I know I get it. I totally get it. But I think that some of these bigger questions
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Samantha Brooks: have the potential for for greater payoff. It's just going to be more of a long term investment.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, I'm just like that. It's more broadly applicable to so many different species. And and humans like, if you even know, like, your genetic background is, you're already a little on the twitchy side, like here's the things we can do.
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Samantha Brooks: Right? Right? Yeah, I saw some great work looking at humans and and their temperament style as it interact, and their temperament style being largely genetic in nature, and then their stress environment based on their academic. I'm sorry. Academic, that's not right. Their economic
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Samantha Brooks: been so were they within poverty or above the the Federal poverty threshold, and and the the more vulnerable personalities really excelled when they were above
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Samantha Brooks: poverty threshold, but were disproportionately, negatively impacted when they were below poverty, so that that sensitivity it was. It was both a super power and a a source of kryptonite, so to speak, given a specific environment, and as animal managers, we sometimes, as much as possible have the power to alter that environment. And if if we have a roadmap to help us decide how to alter it.
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Samantha Brooks: We can really make some measurable changes in the day-to-day quality of life for our horses and ourselves.
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Kris Hiney: Well, it's even. And it's nice, because it sounds like this the genetic background, which is really, I think, helpful to explain, at least has some phenotypic expression like you're talking about that startle response that would help people sort.
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Kris Hiney: This horse needs to be in the hands of somebody who is much more attuned and sympathetic to that kind of reactivity, and can excel like you said so. The humans that excelled versus I could see that same horse in the wrong environment would be in real jeopardy. Right.
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Samantha Brooks: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that's that's part of what we're doing now is that in the interim before we have a nice genetic test to to give a prediction that would be. You know, you send off some hairs and you get back a percentage of always 70 likely to be a challenge in this situation. Right? In the meantime, if we improve our measures of phenotype, we can begin to select on phenotype specifically so.
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Samantha Brooks: Dr. Wickens had a lovely student, Ellen Rankins, who did a bit of work. Yeah, they they did. And now Ellen's up at Rutgers, right. So part of what she did when she was here at Florida was look at ways to measure behavioral reactivity in therapy horses.
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Samantha Brooks: So that, you know, when you got a new therapy horse in, you could do things like like measure their skin sensitivity to calibrated touch and measure their how they react to a uniform behavioral trial like show them a novel object
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Samantha Brooks: to see if there are ways that that we could start to measure this consistently animal to animal and over time, so that we can select on phenotypes with some sort of an organized system until we get better knowledge of of the genetics. And and that's where we're at with the locomotion project, too, is that while long term, I really want to make these tools, so I can do genetics in the short term. It gives us a better way to measure the phenotype, and then you can select on that phenotype.
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Samantha Brooks: both as breeders and as potential purchasers and as managers. Right? Because phenotype can change day to day.
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Samantha Brooks: you can look at your interaction between a genetically influenced phenotype and the environment. If you have a uniform way to measure it day to day to day, just like we have a weght tape
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Samantha Brooks: for for body, condition and and body weight estimates. It'd be nice to have something as simple and repeatable and inexpensive for some of these
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Samantha Brooks: more complex traits.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, I just think that, like the future that I would envision is, you're like he has been tested to be 70% 4-H horse. But like, I just think there's such a population need for that kind of animal, because, like the performance ones, need to be twitchier. But we need this population of
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Kris Hiney: non reactors, so to speak, which.
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Samantha Brooks: Yeah.
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Kris Hiney: Wish.
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Samantha Brooks: Absolutely like people say, Oh, I never! You know. Why would we? Wanna why would we wanna breathe the reactivity out of our horses, thinking of like a genetic disease, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! The fun thing about horses and roll. One reason why we still have so much genetic diversity within horses that we've lost somewhat in some of our dog breeds is that they all do very, very different jobs. And it's not about building the perfect horse. It's about finding the right horse to the right job.
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Samantha Brooks: So for some animals, it's gonna be more reactivity. And for other animals. Yeah, it's it's gonna be, it's gonna be less reactivity. And and anytime you can get a little bit of extra guidance about what job is gonna be best suited to. It's gonna save a lot of time, right? Because I feel like these days, we don't have as many horse people. And I think that the research supports this. We don't have as many horse people who grew up around horses, and and it can take years, if not decades.
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Samantha Brooks: to calibrate your human brain and eyes to be able to assess intuitively
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Samantha Brooks: reactivity reactivity in a horse in a fairly short amount of time. We just don't have as many humans that have that kind of
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Samantha Brooks: carefully practiced skill anymore. So it's probably time we started to use some technologies to help all the rest of us
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Samantha Brooks: be able to to work that magic.
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Kris Hiney: Because I think you know, selection of a horse is so often an emotional response. But, man, if you had data like, if you're like. You can't look at this horse until you look at his data.
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Samantha Brooks: Yes, it is such such an emotional thing. It really, really, really is. So
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Samantha Brooks: anytime. And I tell people I'm like, don't go and buy a car without a car fax, and I don't even fax them anymore. But we still call them the Carfax. Right?
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Samantha Brooks: Try not to buy a horse without something like a comprehensive genetic report. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to completely sway your your opinion one way or another, but
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Samantha Brooks: it's definitely gonna help to guide you through the process. Maybe give you maybe give you a better, a better sense of confidence in your decision. Or maybe it's gonna feed that little niggling, tiny
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Samantha Brooks: kernel of worry in the back of your mind like, Hey, I'm not sure this one is a right fit. Should I take the risk.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah.
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Samantha Brooks: Maybe that generic reports gonna help just kind of, you know, sway you into listening to that worry and maybe avoid a match. That's that's not. That's not perfect.
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Kris Hiney: I'm hoping you can get us to like, you know, where there's horses that can be obese and horses that can't right. That's that's genetic. We need some markers. Stat.
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Samantha Brooks: Oh, I know, boy, we try. We did. We? We worked on that for quite a while, because it is such a pervasive problem, and I had a strong interest in metabolic syndrome, and I would keep working on it for sure if I could just get it funded. But
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Samantha Brooks: sort of the
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Samantha Brooks: the the attention span of our of our funders is pretty short, so laminitis and metabolic syndrome seems to have waned somewhat in the fundable topics. Category. But yeah, same same thing, you know, and even if you have one that tends to be fat, well.
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Samantha Brooks: send him send him somewhere where you have fairly poor quality pasture, and you're really concerned about your budget
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Samantha Brooks: and get him in the right environment, and he'll be in a great situation, and the one that tends to be thinner. Well, send them to Kentucky in the spring.
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Kris Hiney: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
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Samantha Brooks: Be in good shape.
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Kris Hiney: Well, I really appreciate this was a fun conversation like it it actually, it's got my brain turning about some other things I might need to add to some of my courses on, like, I just am fascinated with like behavior. And like, Hmm! There's really some things you have to pay attention to, and not just a one. Size fits all like I think, that super important to me, and to have a geneticist be like.
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Kris Hiney: Oh, cool. It's back here in some DNA.
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Samantha Brooks: Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's there's there's definitely something. There's definitely something to it. And I am hoping that we'll get caught up on the
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Samantha Brooks: on the horse Research, where we are with with lab rats and our model species. But it's funny. I'll tell you. It's really is one of my collaborators works in. She's a human researcher works on humans. And you know, she's just as frustrated because it seems like the human medical community is coming late to this realization as well. So we're not so far behind the 8 ball. But it'll, it'd be really good to to get a grasp, but.
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Kris Hiney: Have you guys tried the lotto as a maybe funding agency.
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Samantha Brooks: You know it's funny.
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Samantha Brooks: I I I my tickets, not here. It's in a kitchen. But my graduate students. This is this is a running joke is that you know, we buy lottery ticket tickets strictly so that Dr. Brooks can say, when I win the lottery, this is the research program we're gonna run.
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Kris Hiney: Well, I tell you what, if you're like the amount of time I spend on writing a grant or buying tickets, which one is gonna pay up for.
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Samantha Brooks: Right in that cost, you know. Cost time. Ratio cost benefit ratio there. Yeah. The lottery ticket sometimes looks like the better payoff.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah.
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Samantha Brooks: So my behavior stuff I've I've sent it to Nsf. Several times. I'm going to rewrite it this summer for my fourth submission to Nsf.
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Samantha Brooks: And last summer I was at a meeting and I talked to an Nsf. Program coordinator, and I said, Hey, I'm kind of frustrated. I've sent in 3 times. I feel like I'm getting nowhere. And he goes. Oh, like 3 times I said, Yeah, 3 times, he said, well, you know, we just ran the statistics, and he said, when it comes to Nsf.
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Samantha Brooks: The Median number of submissions to an award is 7.
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Kris Hiney: Holy buckets!
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Samantha Brooks: 7 years. And and so then I was like, Okay, I don't feel so bad. And then he's like and get this, he said the range. It went from one to 17 years.
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Kris Hiney: Wow!
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Samantha Brooks: Somebody submitted a project 17 years in a row, or 17 submissions in a row, I guess. Sometimes they come around more than once, but sometimes they come around only every 2 years. If we have a Federal Government shutdown right? Somebody submitted the same project 17 times before it got funded. So I'm like.
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Kris Hiney: I bet you they didn't have a heavy teaching load.
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Samantha Brooks: You know. Right?
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Samantha Brooks: Right? Yes. How well they have the time to revise at 17 years in a row. Yeah, this is well, this is why this gets delegated to summer right summer. I'm a 9 month employee. Right? So summer is my.
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Kris Hiney: You're freaking.
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Samantha Brooks: Not paid to do anything, so I'll volunteer my time writing grants.
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Kris Hiney: Oh, it's fun out there, but.
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Samantha Brooks: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's just a blast, just a blast. But yes, we joke all the time at it.
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Samantha Brooks: When I win the lottery.
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Samantha Brooks: Then we'll get to have a
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Samantha Brooks: the research program that we've all dreamed of.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah. Well, again, Dr. Brooks really appreciate your time. I know you're super busy, as like, I said, leading equine geneticist. Everybody knows we really appreciate the work that you're doing for the worse industry, cause it. It's it's tough and applaud any information that you're able to send our way.
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Samantha Brooks: Absolutely. It's been a lot of fun, and just let me know if you want to do it again.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, absolutely.