Lavender foal syndrome in Egyptian Arabian horses: molecular and pathological studies

Abstract

Lavender foal syndrome is one of fatal genetic coat color -associated disorders in Arabian horses caused by a recessive gene. Arabian horse harbor heterozygous genes represent a carrier case with normal criteria, while that harbor homozygous genes mostly will had a characteristic lavender coat color and represented an affected case that will die within few days. Egyptian Arabian horses are incriminated to harbor up to 10% of this syndrome recessive gene and hence of great economic important for Arabian horse’s industry. In this study we trace the historical appearance of LFS in the records of one Arabian horses farm, apply PCR followed by sequence analysis for 8 suspected cases. On the other side pathological investigation of early dead foal with lavender coat color was carried out.Our results detected the incriminated single base deletion at the molecular level by sequence analysis of hair samples in four out of the eight suspected horses. Histopathological investigation was carried out on liver, kidneys and different regions of the brain of dead foal with lavender coat color. Moreover, immuno-histochemistry technique was done to clarify the possible LFS pathogenesis. Our result reflects the principle role of myosin Va as a cargo molecule in LFS pathogenesis in association with development of endoplasmic reticulum stress effect with end result of multi-systemic effects