Abstract
Arabian horses are commonly believed to be one of the oldest and most influential horse breeds in the world. The high financial benefits obtained from races tend to search for genetic markers strongly correlated with the results achieved. To date, the modern approaches such as transcriptome, miRNAome, and metabolome analyses have been used to investigate the genetic background of racing performance as well as endurance capacity in Arabians. The analysis of polymorphisms at the genome level has also been applied to the detection of genetic variants associated with exercise phenotype in the Arabian breed. The presented review summarizes these findings, with a focus on the genetics underlying flat racing and endurance performance traits in different Arabian horse populations.
Highlights
Arabian horses are commonly believed to be one of the oldest and most influential horse breeds in the world
The best-known Arabian horse populations are from the Middle East, Europe (Polish Arabians and French Arabians), the United States, and Canada
Studies performed using mitochondrial DNA confirmed that Arabians originate from the Middle East with current populations in the Middle East, Europe, and North America demonstrating a high number of similar haplogroups and relatively low maternal genetic diversity [2,3,4]
Summary
Arabian horses are commonly believed to be one of the oldest and most influential horse breeds in the world. While during exercise in both breeds, a shift towards oxidizing more fat and less glucose occurs, yet in Arabian horses these changes are more evident and significantly greater Such results indicated significant differences in effort and various racing predispositions observed in racing breeds, which are most likely conditioned by different genetic backgrounds. Compared with other race horse breeds, the muscle tissue of Arabian horses is characterized by significant differences in structure—the predominance of oxidative fibre type I is observed in Arabians, while a higher proportion of fibre type IIa is detected for example in Thoroughbred (TB) horses [8, 9] This variation in fibre type distribution results in different performance traits.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
