Thank you for the breakdown/details of WFFS. I appreciate you putting it an easier to understand description.
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@Anne If you could tell hypp status by looking, they wouldn’t need testing.
what ever present physical characteristics do you think all nh horses have?
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How do they know? Has anyone done any research specifically on this point? I’m not suggesting that their elasticity is not within normal ranges–if it weren’t that would be a detriment. It seems to take years to do this sort of research which requires genome studies and statistical analysis. Such research HAS been done on TBs and has found effects due to heterozygocity from another gene.
Can you point to any peer reviewed research as I have described on the effect of heterozygocity from the WFFS allele?
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That’s correlation though. Not necessarily causation. Selecting for certain traits of importance always comes with a risk of also bringing along undesirable traits that may not become apparent for a while.
That said, FFS is in the same family of diseases that are known to cause hyper-elasticity, such as the broad spectrum of Ehlers-danlos types in people. But there is no proof of this, there isn’t even any study done, that I have found, on whether there’s any validity to this. There was some research started in QHs with the HERDA gene, as the speculation there is also that carriers have an advantage (30% of Reiners (may be Cutting horses, don’t quote me, you get the idea) are carriers. But which came first - the talent which happened to bring the irrelevant (in terms of performance) HERDA gene with it, or the HERDA carrier status giving the horses a bump in talent, and therefore causing a lot more breeding to those early carrier stallions? We don’t know.
I hope we will see some research done at some point, though I’m not holding my breath 
There is no correlation between HYPP status and phenotype. That’s been proven. There are many lightly muscled NH horses (one only has to look at HUS horses to find those), and there are plenty of bulky NN horses.
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Which gene? I’d love to read that.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0205664
This is the most recent study on the myostatin gene, and it asserts that heterozygous racing TBs are different from homozygous ones in their distance competence.
No because it doesn’t exist. I’m not the one who made the assertion. :lol:
JB, can you please point me toward the peer-reviewed work that “proves” NH and NN horses look the same? Because to my eye, they don’t.
My issue with some of the commentary in the FFS discussion at large, essentially boils down to the fact that not all genes perform similarly. Not all mutations are the same. This is a known, verifiable fact. On the most basic level we have recessive mutations wherein two copies are necessary for symptoms to manifest, we have dominant mutations that require only one. This is only one very, very, very basic difference.
Certainly there are observable patterns (among alleles, chromosomes, loci, et cetera) but asserting that the FFS mutation “will” mirror another mutation (that has been studied & is more of a “known entity”) is doing a massive disservice to the FFS discussion at large. Make hypotheses, certainly. Conjecture, test, replicate results, fund study, examine the issue rigorously. But to go into it with preconceptions (and to spread beliefs like hypotheses and preconceptions without making it abundantly clear that nothing about the following statement has grounds in verifiable science) stands to further convolute an already loaded field of discussions.
To be clear, I am absolutely not against conjecture or hypothesis. I think they are necessary, great questions to lead off with, and can be very insightful especially as we incorporate outside experiences into shaping them. However, it is absolutely unfair to shape comprehension and education about FFS around concepts that have no scientific backing specifically related to FFS.
Does anyone have any idea who might entertain further research in this area? I haven’t been able to keep track of what Dr Nena Winand has been doing these days - I am wondering if she may consider affiliating with a university or other research center to further investigate this issue, if funding were available for it? Unlike the first time FFS was discussed, it seems like there is some staying power in the current conversation which I would very much hope could translate into funding further research of the issue!
Nonsense. I’ve personally owned a nh horse who looked like a thoroughbred, and an nh horse who was apha/spotted draft and looked like a gypsy cob.
There is no nh or hh phenotype.
as I said before, if there were, no test would be required.
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I never said they look the same.
It doesn’t take a scientist to see that a horse like Invest N Vital Signs was not a bulky QH, despite her NH status…
… or that Coolest Sensations is a stereotypically bulked out Halter-bred stallion and is NN [IMG2=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“full”,“src”:"http://barmqh.com/images/sensation/profile.jpg)
…to clearly see that HYPP status does not dictate bulky or not.
HYPP does not dictate phenotype.
Go do some more digging into Halter QH stallions, and you will find the above phenotype in both NN and NH status.
Go do some more digging into HUS QH stallions, and you will find the above phenotype in both NN and NH status.
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