Argentinians love polo. And they love polo ponies. Now an Argentinian biotech firm has produced five genetically edited horses. They are designed to outrun the polo legend from whom they descend.
Polo Pureza is an award-winning mare. Her genes, or at least most of them, live on in five horses born in October and November.
Scientists at biotech company Kheiron cloned Polo Pureza. They also used a molecular tool called CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the clones’ genes.
“We design their genome before they are born,” says Gabriel Vichera, Kheiron co-founder and scientific director. (A genome is an organism’s complete set of genes.) CRISPR-Cas9 allows the scientists “to go to any region of the genome, make a precise cut, and be able to make a change in that genome.”
Polo Pureza’s name translates from Spanish as “Polo Purity.” She was inducted into the Argentine Association of Polo Horse Breeders Hall of Fame.
Genes from Polo Pureza make up the genetic base for the five horses. Scientists edited the genes to increase explosive speed while keeping the champion horse’s other qualities.
“There are certain muscle fibers that give it more explosiveness, a faster contraction, and the animal can have this greater explosive speed,” Vichera says. (When muscles move, they contract—tighten or shorten.) The scientists’ goal was to incorporate genes that make a higher proportion of muscle fibers “into a single generation in a precise manner.”
The muscle fibers that Vichera refers to are known as “fast twitch muscle fibers” or “Type II fibers.” There are also slow twitch muscle fibers (Type I fibers). Fast twitch fibers create short, powerful muscle contractions—making them especially useful for sprinters . . . and polo ponies. But they tire faster than slow twitch fibers. Everyone has both kinds of muscle fibers. Most people’s muscles are made of a mix of both fibers. But there are a few exceptions. Muscles in a person’s back that maintain posture mostly contain slow twitch fibers. Muscles that move eyes, on the other hand, are made of fast twitch fibers.
Vichera claims that the horses comply with current Argentine regulations and that the project is not genetic doping.
“We are not inventing anything artificial. But rather we are taking that natural sequence and introducing it into another natural horse,” Vichera says. He says this is what happens over generations of breeding, “but we do it faster and more targeted.”
People have bred traits into or out of lines of horses for hundreds of years. Will this “shortcut” make Argentina’s polo games even more fast-paced?
Why? As we learn more about how God designed our bodies, humans also learn to make changes to genes. This requires wisdom to determine which projects are worthwhile and ethical.