title: Phylogenetic relationships of  the Hucul horse from Romania inferred from mitochondrial D-loop variation.
abstract: The  existence of the Hucul horse on Romanian territory has been documented from the  very distant past; today Hucul is a unique breed that is part of the FAO  Program for the Preservation of Animal Genetic Resources. We compared Hucul  with several primitive European and Asiatic breeds in order to elucidate the  origin of these horses. We analyzed a 683-bp mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) D-loop  fragment in a population of Hucul horses and compared the polymorphic sites  with sequences from other primitive breeds, including Exmoor, Icelandic Pony,  Sorraia, Przewalski Horse, Mongolian Wild Horse, Konik, and Shetland Pony, as  well as with Arabian, Akhal Teke and Caspian Pony. The sequences were truncated  to 247 bp to accommodate short sequence data for the other species. Eighty  horses were analyzed; 35 polymorphic sites representing 33 haplotypes were  observed. The mean percentage of polymorphic sites was 14.2% for this mtDNA  fragment. A neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree was constructed based on Kimura  two-parameter distances and the Network 3.111 software was used for  phylogenetic analysis. The Hucul horse was classified separately from all other  primitive breeds. It is possible that the Hucul horse is not part of the pony  class, as it segregated apart from all primitive pony breeds. We found multiple  origins in the maternal lineage of domestic horse breeds and demonstrated the  uniqueness of the Hucul breed; its origins remain unclear.
authors: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biology, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania. georgescu_se@yahoo.com
authors: S E
authors: SE
authors: Georgescu
authors: M A
authors: MA
authors: Manea
authors: A
authors: A
authors: Dudu
authors: M
authors: M
authors: Costache
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001947:Breeding; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D014644:Genetic Variation; D006239:Haplotypes; D006736:Horses / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D012383:Romania
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial