Hemogoblin phenotypes in Murgese horse

Abstract

In this note we describe two new equine hemoglobin phenotypes found during a survey of the Murgese horse, a rare  Apulian native breed, among whose ancestors the Arabian surely plays an important role. To date we have analysed about  300 individual hemolysates by different chromatographic analyses (PAGIF, IPG, CMC). The results pointed out two unusu-  al patterns where the ratio of the α24Phe60Gln band to the α24Phe60Lys band was 93:7 and 70:30 rather than 60:40  which would have been expected of BII homozygote. Given that the three horses exhibiting the unusual patterns shared  a common ancestor and that none of the possible combinations of the known haplotypes can account for 7-8%  α24Phe60Lys, reasonably a triplicated arrangement has to be postulated. 

Keywords

• Hemoglobin, Alpha globin gene, Alpha globin gene arrangements, Gene expression, Horse