April 12, 2006

UI Scientists, Mule Clone Featured At Idaho Horse Expo April 21-23 in Nampa

NAMPA – Idaho Horse Council will recognize University of Idaho veterinary researchers Drs. Gordon Woods and Dirk Vanderwall as honorary Legends during its 20th annual exposition in Nampa April 21-23.

The UI will display Utah Pioneer, one of three UI mule clones that drew worldwide attention in recent years. His clone brothers' anticipated June 3 and 4 outing on the racetrack in Winnemucca, Nev., is approaching.

Woods and Vanderwall drew worldwide attention in 2003 with Dr. Ken White of Utah State University as leaders of a team that cloned the world's first member of the horse family, a mule named Idaho Gem. Utah Pioneer and Idaho Star are his genetically identical brother clones.

The three resulted from Project Idaho, a cooperative effort by UI and Utah State scientists.

The Idaho Horse Expo at the Idaho Horse Park at Nampa's Idaho Center will feature an opportunity for the public to view Utah Pioneer, who is now a 3-year-old. The dark bay mule clone will be on display at the exposition on Friday, April 21, from 3 to 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday, April 22 and 23, from noon to 5 p.m.

Idaho Gem and Idaho Star are in race training and will again become world firsts June 3 and 4 when they become the first cloned animals in the world to engage in athletic competition.

The venue will be the Winnemucca Mule Races and Draft Horse Challenge, which serves as the first leg of the American Mule Racing Association's triple crown for 3-year-olds.

The scientists' success in equine cloning led the council to choose Woods and Vanderwall among the 13 legends who will be honored Saturday evening.

“I think they put the equine industry of Idaho on the map. They've helped us with their expertise for many years so we wanted to acknowledge their contributions,” said Debbie Amsden of Star, a council board member.

The council will also honor as a legend Ed Duren of Soda Springs, who retired in 1998 as a UI Extension professor of animal science after a 38-year career.

Vanderwall, a UI associate professor of animal and veterinary science, discussed equine cloning as a featured speaker at the International Embryo Transfer Society's annual meeting in January at Orlando, Fla., that drew top cloning experts from Italy, France and the U.S.

Woods, a UI animal and veterinary science professor and Northwest Equine Reproduction Laboratory director, led the cloning project. His main scientific interest began to shift to human health before the cloning began.

Woods focused on the difference between humans' and horses' vulnerability to some cancers and age-onset diseases such as diabetes and related hypertension. No stallion has ever been diagnosed with prostate cancer, for example, while one in six men will be.

That curiosity led him to compare the physiology of men and horses, which led him to propose that calcium regulation within cells was dramatically different between the two species. He continues to focus on the horse as a research model to improve human health.

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CONTACTS: Dr. Gordon Woods, UI professor of animal and veterinary science, (208) 885-6507, gwoods@uidaho.edu ; Dr. Dirk Vanderwall, UI associate professor of animal and veterinary science, (208) 885-7414, dirkv@uidaho.edu ; Bill Loftus, (208) 885-7694, bloftus@uidaho.edu.