Seabiscuit’s Success: Examining the DNA of a Champion
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What made legendary racehorse Seabiscuit a success? The answer lies in his genetics.
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(upbeat music) - Welcome everybody.

Thank you for joining us this evening for Science Pub.

We are so excited that you're here for Science Pub BING, a monthly lecture series, exploring the world around us.

I'm Nancy Coddington.

I'm the director of science content for WSKG Public Media.

I'm also one of the co-founders of Science Pub and I will be your host this evening.

I would like to introduce the other co-founder of Science Pub, Kristine Kieswer.

- Hi, everyone.

I'm Kristine.

As usual, I'll be behind the scenes fielding audience questions.

So please ask away.

And looking really forward to hearing all about Kate's exciting research.

- Thank you, Kristine.

And then we also have with us this evening WSKG science intern Julia Diana from Binghamton University.

Julia will be live tweeting this event.

So if Twitter is your thing you can follow that conversation over on Twitter using the #WSKGscience, and I can pop also Julia's Twitter handle.

I'll also follow WSKGs Twitter handle to see that conversation that's happening there at the same time, or just stay right where you are and enjoy the presentation for this evening.

So tonight's talk is on Seabiscuit's Success, Examining the DNA of a Champion.

Tonight, we are going to learn about the legendary racehorse Seabiscuit.

Many of you are familiar with the details of his 1937 win against War Admiral as popularized by movies and TV.

What did make Seabiscuit such as success?

Kate DeRosa and Steven Tammariello sought to learn just that by examining Seabiscuit's genome.

Kate DeRosa is a doctoral student at Binghamton University and laboratory manager at the department of anthropology.

For this talk she will focus on the genetics behind this champion race horse.

Besides from this project, her research focuses on molecular biology, human evolution and tick-borne diseases.

So welcome, Kate.

- Thank you, Nancy, it's great to be here tonight.

I'm really excited to talk to you guys about all of this.

So, as Nancy said, I'm going to be telling everybody about my research with Seabiscuit and figuring out exactly what made him a champion.

And it's a bit of a long story, but we got to start at the beginning.

So we need to find out who is Seabiscuit?

Everyone knows about Seabiscuit to some degree.

It's maybe less of a household name than it was in the 1940s and the late 1930s.

But it's something everybody has pretty much heard about.

From that, since we know he's a champion race horse, we wanted to know what we could learn about Seabiscuit from his DNA.

And then we also wanted to know what actually made him such a success.

Is this something that we can actually tell on a genetic level or was it purely a training or just lots of luck?

That's what we'll sort of get into tonight.

I just want to say, if you have questions during, Nancy will be monitoring the chat and posing them.

So please feel free to ask questions as they come up.

We will also have questions at the end.

Okay.

So to start talking about Seabiscuit, we need to know more about him and his family tree.

So, maybe a slightly lesser known horse, but still very very successful was Man 'o War.

This photo here is Man 'o War back in 1920.

He was born in 1917 and died in 1947.

And he is one of the greatest race horses of all time.

And at this point pretty much every modern race horse is a descendant of him to some degree, whether it's great great great great grandson or anything like that.

It's still somehow can all be traced pretty much back to him.

So like many horses, he began racing around the age of two and was successful winning 20 of his 21 races, which is a great start record.

And I just want to point out what we're going through.

Keep in mind the race number we'll talk about because that's something that we'll be coming back with Seabiscuit and part of what made him such a success.

So back in the 1920s, when Man 'o War was racing, he earned the equivalent of about $3.1 million in today's currency or about $250,000 back then.

So he was an extremely successful racer, and more importantly, he is the sire or the father for War Admiral and Hardtack who we'll see coming up are very important in Seabiscuit's life.

So War Admiral was born in 1934 and died in 1959.

This is a picture of him right here from I want to say around 1940, 1938.

He also began racing at the age of two and he was the fourth ever American triple crown winner in 1937.

And many people know of him, not only through that win, but with his race against Seabiscuit in 1938, which we'll get to in a bit, which was dubbed the match race of the century.

So he ran a few more races than his father did, Man 'o War.

He did 26 total in his career, and won 21, still a great record, but he won nearly $5 million worth of prizes between all of his races.

And, once again, he is found in the lineage of many of today's successful race horses.

Some you might remember slightly more recently, back in 2015 and 2018, include the triple crown winners of American Pharaoh and Justify.

Okay.

So then we have Seabiscuit himself who was born in 1933 and his grandfather was Metaphor.

His sire was Hardtack, which I mentioned briefly before.

He was not a large successful race horse, but his, for lack of a better term, brother, War Admiral, and his father, Man 'o War, were.

Seabiscuit was rather small for a thoroughbred horse.

He was about 15 hands tall, which is about a little like five foot nine or so.

Relatively small when you're thinking about one of these large race horses you see today.

And he weighed about 1,200 pounds.

In comparison, American Pharaoh, the triple crown winner of 2015 was 16 hands and near the same weight about, little under 1,200 pounds and Justify was 16.3 hands and over 1,300 pounds.

So overall, talking about, when we look at the range of race horse sizes, Seabiscuit was pretty tiny.

And this is actually a picture here of him with his trainer Tom Smith, which we'll get into the history of in a bit.

And a bit of a fun fact, Seabiscuit was actually named after his sire, Hardtack, because Hardtack was a type of cracker that used to be eaten by sailors.

So Hardtack and Seabiscuit are analogous names.

So to actually get into what made Seabiscuit so special, we need to start looking at his race history and how his career sort of started.

So Seabiscuit was a lazy horse.

I think it's something we can pretty much all identify with.

He liked to sleep, he liked to eat and to sort of like lounging about and not really doing his training, which, to be fair, I wouldn't want to be either.

But because of this when he was being trained over by Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, he basically kind of gave up on Seabiscuit for a bit.

He was like, this horse could be good but he's lacking that drive.

Instead he focused his training efforts onto Gallant Fox, who became the triple crown winner.

And then he trained the horse Omaha, who went on to win the 1935 triple crown.

So Seabiscuit was around there but not really doing a whole lot at that point.

So much like his peers and his father and his grandfather, Seabiscuit began racing when he was two years old.

Problem is, unlike those other horses, he lost his first 17 races, which is very different when you look at someone like War Admiral, who won 21 of their 26 or Metaphor who won 20 of their 21 races.

So he's not doing too great here.

And this is where I said pay attention to the number of races they actually run the horses on.

We're looking at career numbers under 30, typically, and Seabiscuit is starting out losing 17 races his first year.

Now, during his second year of racing, he had 35 races in one year, which is, again, a ton to put on a horse.

More in one year than most race horses have in their entire career.

But things started looking up for him a bit.

He took first place five times and second place seven times.

So Seabiscuit was coming around, he's doing a bit better.

And then his third year of racing he only ran 12 races and won four of them.

So also, still not really a great track record.

And at this point, by the time he's three years old, War Admiral had already won the triple crown.

So...

I should say, by the time War Admiral was three, he had already won the triple crown, was looking to sort of be retired and Seabiscuit is only just sort of starting to pick up the pace and perform well.

So he's kind of a late bloomer, which is, again, odd when we're looking at race horses, considering they typically retire pretty young.

So at this point, Seabiscuit is purchased by Charles Howard in Saratoga, New York, not far from here, in 1936 for $8,000, which again, back then is a decent chunk of change.

And this is when Seabiscuit began working with Tom Smith who was the trainer in the previous slide's photo.

So, now we start seeing Smith work with Seabiscuit and we get into the 1936 race here.

This is when Seabiscuit really starts picking up the pace and sort of moving ahead within the racing world and making a bit of a name for himself.

So Seabiscuit was paired with the jockey Red Pollard and was then shipped out to California by train in November of 1936.

There he went on to win the Bay Bridge Handicap by five lengths, which is quite a decent lead there.

And what's interesting is, at that point he had 116 pound handicap.

The handicap, basically, for those of you not familiar with horse racing, is how much weight they sort of give the horse as a, not such a disadvantage, but how much weight they're carrying.

So the better you are, the more weight you have and this is something we'll come back to later.

So his handicap at this time was only 116 pounds.

He also went on this year to win the World's Fair Handicap.

And he actually managed to hold the lead the entire time, which is something that Seabiscuit hadn't always been doing.

He's well known, and we'll talk about with some of his other races, sort of making up the distance and closing at the end at times.

- Kate, we have a couple of questions and you might be getting into this.

It might be a little early to ask this... - Yeah!

- But here he's going into this with kind of an abysmal record, why did they think that he was gonna actually do anything after, you know, 35 in one year that he didn't really do well.

- So I can't say exactly what they were thinking on that one.

I'm sure people who are slightly better versed in the history of Seabiscuit or racing specifically might know what they were actually thinking.

But I think the idea behind it was that he had a strong pedigree and he showed promise, he was just lazy.

So I think the idea was, for the first trainer to just, for Fitzsimmons to just, you know, count his losses, get the money.

And Charles Howard, I think, really saw it more as something that they could work on and improve with a little bit of patience.

So instead of sort of being the toss aside, like, okay, yeah, you go over there and play while I work with the one who actually wants to train, you know, maybe if we actually focus attention on him we can get something promising.

Certainly unusual, so, in general, let alone back then, for horses.

- Thank you.

- Okay.

Are there other questions or do you... Should I keep going?

- No, please keep going.

Yep.

- Okay.

Cool.

(laughs) Okay.

So, once we get into 1937, Seabiscuit really starts picking up the pace.

He goes into the San Antonio Handicap, where he raced against Rosemont who won and Seabiscuit came away with fifth place.

The following week Seabiscuit raced in the Santa Anita Handicap and lost a Rosemont.

But this time by a nose, instead of being all the way back in fifth place, Seabiscuit just missed, just a week apart.

And then following that week there was the San Juan Capistrano Handicap where Seabiscuit then went ahead and won by seven lengths.

So we're seeing this drastic change in his, not only his lead, but how he's basically, how he's able to turn around and go from losing so poorly, basically, to just destroying, destroying the racetrack.

He's so far ahead of everybody.

And at this point they start increasing his handicap because he's doing better.

And he was now winning with handicaps of 130 pounds, 14 pounds more then when he was losing with before.

So between June and August he ran five additional state's races where he continued to beat Rosemont, still with a nice lead of seven lengths.

And again, with up to that 130 pound handicap.

And at this point, for 1937, he won 11 of his 15 races.

So significantly better track record than he'd previously had, and was the year's leading money winner for the United States.

And again, I just sort of wanna point out, like, you know, he ran more races within the last two years then most horses run their entire career.

So it's not only incredible that he's still going at this point, but that he's only gaining speed and doing better.

And that's part of what makes him such an incredible champion.

So now 1938 comes around and he's officially a five-year old horse.

Man 'o War already retired.

He retired at three.

And War Admiral retired due to injury around the age of four.

So Seabiscuit not only has run further but has managed to stay uninjured.

What is kind of doing some old age racing a bit here?

He's definitely one of the older horses on the track.

And even though Seabiscuit was doing great, and he was doing fantastic with the new trainer, and he's doing great with Pollard as his jockey, Pollard gets injured.

And from there things sort of go downhill a little bit for Seabiscuit because he's gotta get adjusted to a new jockey who was George Wolfe pictured here with Seabiscuit back in 1938.

And of course, the next race, the first race they go together is the Santa Anita Handicap which he had done before.

And he lost to the poor stagehand who had a lower handicap by 30 pounds.

So Seabiscuit didn't win, but still going strong there.

And at this point they've been talking about, there's been this increasing excitement because Seabiscuit has been doing so well.

And he's sort of like the comeback kid.

Everyone loves a comeback story and he's doing fantastic.

And War Admiral was the triple crown winner.

And they kept scheduling stakes races over on the East Coast, which would involve more traveling for Seabiscuit, to sort of have them go head to head.

And somehow they all always ended up being scrapped.

So it wasn't happening, but there's just that growing indication, sort of nationwide, to see these two champions race off and sort of have the race of the century as it's become known.

So the race of the century.

We have War Admiral and The Biscuit, as we see here in this picture, going head to head in a race over November 1st in Baltimore.

So again, Seabiscuit had to make the travel back from California, all the way back to the East Coast, where there was an estimated 40,000 fans in the stands and 40 million listening in on the radio, which is just an insane of people to think about tuning in.

That's gotta be close to, I'd imagine, people tuning in for the Super Bowl or something.

And War Admiral was heavily favored to win.

He's the triple crown winner.

Seabiscuit never won the triple crown.

He's the best horse essentially.

And Seabiscuit ended up starting the race with a strong lead.

War Admiral was able to pull level with him and then Seabiscuit did what he was best known for, where he basically got a glimpse of his competition out of the corner of his eye and ended up winning by four lengths, which is a huge lead, especially when you're talking about two, pretty much two of the best race horses alive.

So all of this begs the question, what made Seabiscuit so special, right?

Like how was he able to have such a strong comeback so late in his career?

I mean, he didn't start really picking up and winning until he was three and four.

And then he beats the triple Crowner at the age of five.

So what we were interested in finding out is, what made this happen, right?

Is this purely the luck of having a great trainer?

Is it Seabiscuit himself having special genetically?

Was it luck of the draw, right?

What actually made this possible because it's not something we see every day, right?

We don't hear about courses like Seabiscuit often at all.

So now there is a question I'd like to pose to all of you.

We're gonna get into the DNA of it and what we were looking at with Seabiscuit, but who knows what we can learn from DNA?

And I believe Nancy has a poll for this in the chat.

Is that where it's located?

- I'm gonna go ahead and launch this poll.

So just watch your screens right in front of you.

And so this is an anonymous poll.

Go ahead.

And it should be popping up on your screen right now.

What do we learn from DNA?

So this is a multiple choice.

You can choose more than one.

So the phenotype, how somebody looks, family ancestry.

Do we learn about disease risk or are you not sure?

And that's completely fine.

You can answer that too.

And remember, this is anonymous.

So please just go ahead and cast your vote as best as you can.

And we will share the results as far as how the group answered in just a moment.

And then Kate's going to take that on.

Rachel, I'm glad that your tech issues have been resolved.

So thank you.

And thank you Damien for helping her out with that.

So we've got, people are still voting, giving you just another moment to cast that vote, and I'm gonna go ahead and end our poll and share our results.

- All right.

So, I see everyone has been paying attention to their ancestry, right?

So we can learn about family ancestry from DNA.

And we can also look about, we can also learn about how someone looks or their phenotype, and we can also learn about disease risk.

You guys did awesome with that.

I thought maybe this would be a harder question but you guys are, you guys all know your stuff.

- Smart cookies.

- Yeah.

This is all stuff that we can learn from, look at DNA, right?

So DNA, which I guess I probably don't need to cover this because you all pretty much know, is your double stranded molecules of inheritance.

So you're gonna get some for mom.

You're gonna get some from dad.

And that's what sort of makes you you.

And your siblings might look alike.

You might look nothing alike.

And it's that from mom and dad that makes you you.

And from that your genotype and your phenotype are determined.

So your genotype is what we call the actual basis of your DNA.

What gene sequences do you have?

What proteins do those genes make?

How do genes and proteins function, right?

So it's really talking about on the molecular level of what your DNA is doing.

Then when we get to phenotype, it's how is your DNA making you look the way you look?

Why do I have dark hair and dark eyes?

Why am I tall?

Why are other people short?

It's sort of that end of genetics.

But there's lots of other things we can learn too, like ancestry.

So this is something like you all saw in the poll, hear about all the time, right?

We get the ads like 23andMe, ancestry.com, like, oh, I'm gonna go and find my relatives.

And they do a lot with DNA, right?

'Cause you get traces of that from your autosomal DNA or all of your cellular DNA, pretty much, from mom and dad.

But some more interesting ways we can tell information about ancestry is by looking at the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA.

And the reason those two markers are so informative is because unlike all of your other DNA that gets mixed from mom and dad and recombines it and makes you look like you, the Y chromosome goes directly from fathers to sons.

Like you can see here on the middle picture.

So a guy and his brothers and their dad and their grandpa and their great grandpa all have the same Y chromosome.

And we can actually look and see your ancestry or what sort of mutations you have in that Y chromosome to learn about where your ancestors are from.

The same is true for mitochondrial DNA because this is inherited from mothers to children.

So that only goes maternally and is not sex dependent.

So all siblings have the same mitochondrial DNA from, if they share a mother, and that is the same as their grandmother which is the same as their great-grandmother.

And that's, these markers, because they're not recombining and they just go straight from either father to son or mother to children, we can actually use them to sort of trace backwards in your family tree, or in this case, the horse's family tree, pedigree, to sort of get an idea of their ancestry and where they're coming from.

And like I mentioned, autosomal DNA is pretty much everything else.

And it's a mix from both of your parents and you and your siblings will differ just because it's always gonna be a bit of a shuffle around between there.

The DNA can also tell us, like I said, about our physical traits, so your eye color, your hair color, it can also tell us things about health issues.

Are you predisposed to certain diseases, right?

Some people have a genetic predisposition to diseases like allergies and asthma.

They have genetic predispositions to cancers.

Predispositions to diabetes or cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, you name it.

That's another one we see advertised all the time too is like the ancestry health kits and they'll screen you for different genes.

And it can also tell us something about your physical abilities.

And this is where things get pretty interesting.

Well, at least in my opinion.

So we can learn lots about all different types of animals, including humans, from their genes about their athletic performance.

Right?

So one thing we can look at is sprinters versus marathoners.

Now, I know I'm like, I'm not great at either, but some people are really great at running really fast for really short period of time.

Other people go on and win marathons because they have that kind of endurance where they can keep a nice pace the whole time and have that endurance.

And there are different genetic markers that tell us what type of muscles you have, basically.

Do you have the slow twitch muscle fibers that are great for endurance, because they're just kind of slow and steady, slow and steady wins the race, or do you have a fast twitch muscle fiber, which is really good for high use in short bursts?

And we've actually found over and over quite a few scientific studies that marathoners tend to have about 80% slow twitch fibers while sprinters have about 80% fast twitch fibers.

so we're not saying you're going to go ahead and become a amazing, like gold medalist, sprinter because you have fast twitch muscle fibers, but chances are if you don't have those fast twitch muscle fibers, doesn't matter how much you train, you're not gonna be the world's best sprinter, just because your biology, your body isn't really built for that.

Just like someone who has mostly fast twitch muscle fibers isn't gonna go ahead and become a marathoner.

They're just not built for that type of endurance.

And this is something that has been studied in lots of species, but of course, we're talking about race horses today, and this is something that's been looked at quite a bit, not only for the scientific research purpose of it, but the fact that horse racing is an industry, right?

And it's something that people are constantly trying to sort of better the odds of being successful, making lots of money in.

And so lots of research has been done to this and one paper polished by Emiline Hill in 2010 found the myostatin gene, which has to do with your muscle fibers, varies just like it does for humans in horses.

And based on having one particular type of mutation, a single nucleotide polymorphism or a snip, and this gene will determine if race horses have the potential to actually win, right?

Because it doesn't matter how great your training is, or if everything else goes perfect, if you don't have the right physiology, you're not going to outrun a horse that does.

So this is where Seabiscuit and Dr. Tammariello come in.

So Dr. Tammariello is in charge of the equine, the Institute for Equine Genomics at Binghamton University and he is specifically interested in studying the molecular physiology of thoroughbred race horses.

So expanding upon what we know about the myostatin genes, looking at, what other markers are we finding that are associated with racing well.

If you have certain gene profiles, are you going to be a fast runner or are you gonna be super slow?

And it's just interesting to kind of see how that plays out and how that might impact a horse's career.

And he has done testing for horses throughout the US, South Africa and New Zealand.

And this also plays a role in breeding decisions, because for those of you who are more into the horse racing aspect of all of this, a lot of times, even today, breeding decisions are made sort of based on like the look of the horse.

How is horse presenting?

Does it look like a good horse?

While with genetics, we can actually tell you if that horse that looks good is actually good.

Again, just because you have the right genes doesn't mean you'll be a champion race horse but it gives you a better advantage of being one compared to someone who doesn't.

So a couple of years ago Jacqueline Cooper from the Seabiscuit heritage foundation, which is a great resource for anyone who wants to learn even more details about Seabiscuit.

I believe the link is in the chat.

She wanted to learn about Seabiscuit's genetics and contacted Dr. Tammariello.

And she contacted him with samples from Bronze Sea, which is Seabiscuits great great great grandson.

And unfortunately, that is so far back in Seabiscuit's pedigree that we can't really learn about Seabiscuit and his genetics from someone that far separated, it would be like trying to figure out your grandmother, your great great great grandmother's genetics off of you.

There's just been too many generations and too many changes, but the problem is, Seabiscuit died in 1947.

So what can we actually do to learn about him and his genetics since he passed away decades ago?

And this is where Colonel Mike Howard comes in.

He is the great grandson of Charles Howard, the one who owned Seabiscuit at the time of his death and trained him through all those champions, championships.

And he happened to go ahead and say, hey, we've always had Seabiscuit's hooves in our house growing up and maybe you can actually do something with them.

So we end up getting Seabiscuit's hooves.

Now this isn't something that is done any more to my knowledge.

But back in the day, when Seabiscuit was alive, it was common practice to silver a horse's hooves, champion race horse's hooves, sort of as like a memento or sort of keepsake.

Think about how people used to do like the bronze or silvered baby shoes.

The first shoes.

They did that with Seabiscuit.

So, odd mantle piece decorum, in my opinion, but hey, it got us DNA.

(laughs) So if you look, the hooves aren't in super stellar condition here.

I have a lot more pictures coming up with this, but they're silvered.

And there's a nice deep cup that goes about this deep, where Seabiscuits leg would have been on his foot.

And the outside of them is also silvered.

And he has a silver horseshoe.

The only part that is still like biological material, basically, this point right down over here which we'll talk about in a second.

Otherwise the rest of it is all covered in metal, which is problematic when you're trying to look for DNA.

So before we get into what we did with Seabiscuit's hooves, let's talk a little bit about hoof anatomy.

So the wall of the hoof, which, in Seabiscuit's case is covered in silver is like a giant nail, just a really hard fingernail.

And underneath it, that part that I said was the only biological material left is called the frog.

And it's essentially like a giant built-in shock absorber for the horse that allows the force of striking the ground hard to be cushioned.

And this way there's less damage and force put on the bones and joints.

So the question is, we know that the frog is there and that hasn't been covered in silver.

Awesome.

Maybe we can get DNA from there.

Problem is, when we look at, from about here up, there was nothing left, right?

It's just gone.

We don't have Seabiscuit's leg.

But we have silver that's going down like this, into the hoof, which means there's not a whole lot of bone there.

We maybe have the coffin bone or the navicular bone or some of this digital cushion here that's part of the frog.

But with the hooves being silvered like that, we couldn't actually take off the metal and it was kind of a guessing game.

So we had to go on a bit of a hunt for DNA.

Which I have to admit was pretty fun.

We suited ourselves up and went into the ancient DNA and forensics lab at Binghamton University, run by Dr. Andrew Merryweather over in anthropology.

And basically we had to very, very, very carefully drill into the bottom part of Seabiscuit's hoof.

So you can see here, but because there is metal right there, potentially, immediately on the other side, we had to be extremely careful because there was no way we were allowed to damage these hooves at all.

These are an irreplaceable family heirloom.

They belong to the Seabiscuit, The Biscuit.

So it was a bit stressful, but definitely exciting to see if we can get anything out of there without damaging them.

And, luckily, by making a couple of small holes, that you can see in these pictures here and here, we were able to sort of drill in and move back and forth with a drill bit, to get some bone powder out, just kind of kept shaking the hoof ever so slightly.

And here's another, I have a bit more of a close-up I have, how we were able to go in.

You could see, like, they're really not great shape.

I know this is very zoomed in, but they're...

I mean they're from 1947, they're old, they're not great, but we were able to get some DNA.

So in this, these two pictures over here, those are a little vials of bone powder we were able to get from the hooves to go ahead and try doing DNA extractions.

So bone does have DNA, and it's the best source for getting what we consider ancient DNA or DNA from something that is not living.

So, in this case, Seabiscuit is obviously passed in 1947 and we're dealing with his hooves.

This is considered ancient DNA.

Just like when you hear about stories of sequencing a mummy or something like that and looking at the genes of an older human, that would also be considered ancient.

So in order to do that with bone, it's of a bit an ordeal.

You have to do DNA extraction over the course of a week, because, basically, all of the DNA that's in your bones is inside the really hard cells that make up your bones.

So we need to actually decalcify them so we can break the cells open, which takes a couple of days to basically make them nice and weak.

And then from there, we're able to remove all of the excess sediment that breaks down from your bones, and do a DNA extraction where we actually go ahead and filter out your DNA.

I won't go into the details of that 'cause it's a little boring, definitely not as cool as drilling into Seabiscuit's hooves.

But from there, once we have DNA, we went ahead and did DNA amplification or polymerase chain reaction which is basically used to make lots and lots of copies of a segment of DNA that you're interested in.

So, what we did was start with mitochondrial DNA.

Like I mentioned, a couple of slides ago, which would have been from Seabiscuit's mom.

And the reason we started with that is when you're dealing with ancient DNA, DNA is harder to amplify and to study because it basically starts breaking down over time which makes it difficult to make copies of, right?

It's a lot harder to copy sections of a book if the, if you're working with a really bad Xerox copy to begin with versus a brand new textbook, right?

One is going to be much easier to read than the other.

And mitochondrial DNA has thousands of copies per cell, unlike your nuclear DNA which you just have the one nuclear genome per cell.

So that means that it's much easier amplify just because there's a lot more of it to start with.

So even though it will be very degraded, you just have more of it.

So it's a little less like trying to look for a needle in a haystack.

Oh, right.

So then, from there, we were actually able to amplify Seabiscuit's mitochondria DNA, which is exciting.

It's not always something easy to do, especially with ancient DNA.

And this was pretty exciting because we were able to get a sequence which tells us a couple of things.

One, we do have good DNA there.

We have horse DNA.

It's definitely from a horse.

And it's really from Seabiscuit.

There wasn't really too much of a question of that because we got them from Colonel Mike Howard and they were always something in the family's possession, but it's kind of also nice to know that Seabiscuit's mitochondrial DNA matches that for other, for basically what we expect from his mom.

So it's sort of a double check that we know, hey, these really belonged to Seabiscuit and also, yay, we could actually get DNA from these super old hooves that have been hanging out in someone's house for decades.

So, this brings the question what can we learn about Seabiscuit's racing ability?

So now that we know we have DNA, what can we actually look at?

So the problem is that, yes, we got DNA, but unfortunately it's very degraded, which means we can't do anything like cloning, which we always got the question, like are you gonna clone Seabiscuit?

No, we're not gonna clone Seabiscuit.

But what we were able to do is look at some mutations that are associated with racing ability, like the myostatin.

And we did this you snip a single nucleotide polymorphism genome typing.

So what that's doing is we're looking for single base mutations.

So like one nucleotide different in Seabiscuit's genes, the genome, that we already know influence racing ability.

And it's something that Dr. Tammariello uses all the time in his research.

The plus side to doing this is you don't need nearly as much DNA and it's okay if it's a, not as good quality, like what we have here with Seabiscuit.

It's also much quicker than sequencing.

You can get results in the scale of about an hour and a half, as opposed to doing like two full days worth of lab work for sequencing.

So that was pretty cool.

And what we found is that Seabiscuit had mutations associated with both long distance runners, and some that had to deal with stamina and speed.

So basically you had mutations that tell us he would be a really good long distance runner.

And this is something we see in his race record, right?

Because he was better with speed at the end.

His big thing, kind of like the race of the century, was pulling away at the end, getting, going ahead from being level with War Admiral, to winning by a lot, winning by a few lengths.

And he also had a few minor mutations.

So not all mutations impact your racing ability equally.

And the few that he had are associated with sprinters, meaning that he'd be really good at running really fast for short periods of time.

So he has this interesting combination of being fast for a bit, but also having that stamina for the long run.

And we kind of see this in this race record, right?

He won a bunch short races that are about five furlongs long, which is about 1,100 yards.

And he also won long races that were over a mile long.

So we see that he can do both, and he can do both well.

And we also know from other studies that modern race horses with this particular genotype are late bloomers.

So they're not coming out of the gates, running, having stellar records at the age of two and winning the triple crown at the age of three.

And we know Seabiscuit didn't even become successful until he started hitting age four when most of the more typical horses have already retired.

So it was really cool to kind of see that there are reasons for Seabiscuit sort of being the lazy, slow starting horse that he was, how he was able to do so well, like, obviously back in 1936, when they started training him and they didn't know that he had this type of genome and would end up being in the race of the century and beating the triple crown owner War Admiral.

But we can actually tell now that that's what happened.

So if he didn't have this particular genotype, it wouldn't have mattered how hard they trained him.

He wouldn't have been able to do of the type comeback we basically saw.

One thing I do want to add is from this we actually were sent some of War Admiral's hair.

Someone had War Admiral's hair stored away, wrapped up in a little package with the postcard of him from back in, like, 1919.

Not 1919, I'm sorry, the early 1930s and sent them to us so we can try and do the same genetic testing on him.

And unfortunately, because it was hair and they were so old, hair is not great for getting DNA from, especially in older cases.

We weren't able to do anything with him, but, really cool because I'm curious to see if anyone else has random horse hair samples from previous champions or maybe some other silver hooves lying around that we can sort of get a better idea of what these race horses looked like, because Seabiscuit is certainly very different compared to the modern race horse.

A lot has changed in the last 50, 60, 70 years.

But anyway, that is all I have about Seabiscuit.

I would be very happy to take any questions that you might have, or if you think of other ones later, please feel free to email me and I will get back to you.

- Thank you, Kate.

Wow.

This was really amazing.

And I've learned so many things as I'm sure everyone attending has.

We do have a lot of questions to ask you.

So I'm just going to jump right in.

One of the questions that came up a little bit earlier in your presentation was how does mitosis happen with the mitochondrial DNA?

- So mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the mother because it is found in your, the egg cells basically.

So it's, and it itself is not undergoing mitosis, is a separate DNA molecule found within the mitochondria in your cells.

So then mitosis is part of like your cells actually replicating and your whole genome replicates, the mitochondria itself, I don't remember specifically off the top of my head how the replication works there, but it's an entirely separate process for those.

I know it's not the best answer, but I can look more into that.

(laughs) I haven't thought about that for a very long time.

- (laughs) And back to that basic biology.

How do you test the twitch?

(laughs) How do you test the twitch fibers?

- So I haven't actually done the testing myself but I, it's on like a physiological level, but basically like you're looking at genes, like the myostatin gene, we've looked at the horses to see what it's associated with.

I don't know about testing the actual physiology, how they do it.

'Cause I've always worked on it on from the genetic end.

No, I'm not really sure how they test that.

Sorry.

- And that is totally okay.

I mean, that's the great part about this.

There's so many great questions that people will come up with, allows them to also go find out some of that information.

So, looking...

So I wanna stay with that for just a moment though, looking at mutations, these are mutations compared to what, how do you know that they're different?

What are they being compared to?

- Okay.

So, all right.

I'm trying to think of it this way.

So I don't know as about, how they're determined so much from horses, but for example, like when we're looking at human genetics, we have what they call like the human reference genome.

So back in 2004, when they first sequence the human genome, they sort of made this assembly where it's like, okay this is from sequencing all of these individuals, this is what's considered sort of normal or what we use as our reference.

And it's just basically like a published sequence or set of sequences.

Like, for example, when I look at mitochondrial DNA, just like I did with Seabiscuit, we have basically a reference sequence.

It's sort of arbitrarily defined, in the sense that, you know, like from human mitochondrial DNA, it just happens to be that the reference is the first mitochondrial genome they sequenced, and the mutations are defined off of.

So it's a bit arbitrary which I know is not the best answer, but there's, you can find the references online.

And it's sort of like the one everybody refers to.

Sort of like a really really boring encyclopedia.

(laughs) - (laughs) Okay.

Thank you.

So, do we know why horses with genetic makeups similar to like Seabiscuit, why they're late bloomers, you know, do their muscles mature or change in their makeup over time?

- I don't actually know if we know why that happens, other than we see the same genotype in horses with similar race records.

I don't know if it has to deal with like different rates of, like, maturation or growth or anything like that.

I don't know if that's actually been determined why they impact things that way.

We just know that combination tends to associate with that sort of race record.

- I'm gonna kind of stick in that same theme.

So many abilities manifest themselves after skipping a generation.

Seabiscuit seems to have followed his grand sire Man 'o War more than his sire.

Did this pattern persist with his offspring?

- No, Seabiscuit did not actually sire any successful race horses.

So, sort of ends there with him.

Like none of his offspring have gone on to be great winners.

It all sort of stems back to Man 'o War.

If you go back far enough in modern pedigrees you pretty much ended up back by Man 'o War.

You have to go quite a ways back, but you do get there.

Oh yeah.

Seabiscuit was not a good sire unfortunately - I guess that was disappointing for his owners.

- (laughs) Yeah.

- So are horses genes tested today, you know, right from the get go, ruling them in or out of racing?

- Yes and no.

So, not everybody does that, but it is something a lot of people consider when looking at whether they want to buy a horse or determine if the horse is good for breeding or if they think that even... Like, how, basically, like, how much do I wanna risk on this horse?

Do they have the genetics that might make this worth spending, you know, a million dollars on two year old horse?

Or should I just skip it?

And from my experience, I've been to quite a few sales now and auctions, some people are very interested in finding that stuff out.

Some people have genetic testing done and then ignore it.

Some people have no interest.

So it's kind of hit and miss but it's certainly something that is out there and is done regularly.

It's just kinda depending on the person you're talking to, if it's something they prefer.

- Great, thank you.

We've got a lot of great questions.

Please continue typing them into the chat for the Q&A.

And we are going to get to all of the questions tonight.

So let me hop over to, would you still have been able to use PCR if the samples were even older?

It sounds like you were really fortunate that Seabiscuit's DNA wasn't centuries old.

- It all depends on how the samples are preserved.

So we were very lucky in the sense that they were well preserved.

They were kept in someone's house.

They weren't treated with anything that we know of, because sometimes preservatives use like, it'd be things like formaldehyde and things like that for fixing tissues can actually destroy DNA.

We were very lucky because they were kept dry and everything.

So the DNA didn't degrade too much, but people do get DNA and do sequencing, even whole genome sequencing for much, much older samples.

Like we'll get Neanderthal samples.

We actually have like a reference genome for them and they're significantly older than Seabiscuit, but it's all a matter of finding things that are well preserved.

So your best bet is typically mummified tissue that is fully preserved.

It hasn't gotten wet, which makes DNA degrade more, not in a hot climate, which makes it degrade more.

Basically, like, as soon as something is no longer living you're racing against the clock, but it can happen.

It's just more often than not it's not great, which is very sad, but... - Well, I think you explained it really well with, you know, there wasn't necessarily formaldehyde used with this and that definitely destroys the DNA.

So it all in that preservation process, right?

- [Julia] Yeah.

- So we have a question.

Did you have an out-group for your DNA?

- For what exactly?

'Cause I know- - Out group- - So I know what you mean by out-group but we weren't doing anything with... Like, I've only ever used...

I've only used out groups with certain types of analysis, which we did not do with Seabiscuit.

So I'm used to seeing...

I don't know if I'm answering the question correctly for whoever posed it, but out-group is something I usually see used with like a tree analysis, where you're trying to look, like think about those diagrams you see of like an evolutionary tree and just see like humans and different primate species.

We didn't do a tree for Seabiscuit.

So I didn't use an out group and we weren't testing other horses DSM.

So I'm not sure if that's answering the question.

- So I think there was a little clarification to compare a basis horse DNA too.

- Oh.

So we just use like the... We just use the reference that we have that was talking about earlier, like the reference genome that we use.

That was just our out group.

- Thank you.

Okay.

So, how about, let me see where we're at.

How does Seabiscuit's DNA compare to current champions?

- So that is something I wish I had an answer for, but being that current champions are just that they are champions.

They have high costs for breeding and things like that.

So their genetic information is sort of treated like a proprietary piece of information.

I can't necessarily just like go up and get samples, like, I've tested, like, American Pharaoh and that before for some of these markers, but I'm not allowed to do the comparisons because it's, sort of, it was for the benefit of the owners not for scientific purposes if that makes sense, which stinks.

'Cause I would really like to know, but... (laughs) - Be great if they would let you release that eventually but it probably might be after his passing.

- Yeah.

Maybe later when he's like past peak breeding or something, we can do that.

'Cause I would really like to know, but it gets a little muddy when you're talking about, technically, like, oh, it's a living animal.

We can analyze DNA from them.

But also at the same time there's someone's property that they're using to make money.

So it gets a little muddy.

- That's a good way to put it.

This kind of goes along, I think, with that other question, can you get access to any of the remains such as the bones or corpses?

And would this be in plural, I'm assuming other race horses.

- Okay.

So other race horses, no one has contacted us about that.

I test hair from race horses frequently, but that's, you know, for living horses when they're like, hey, should I buy this horse?

Other?

So I know for Seabiscuit specifically, I can't.

Seabiscuit's grave site is actually unknown.

It is a family secret within the Howard family.

So it's not to be disturbed.

Even people who are super Seabiscuit fans that go to like the ranch can not go see his grave site because it is unmarked.

So that was another issue with this was, the hooves where our one shot and luckily they worked, but as far as other horses, I mean, if you know of any, yeah, we could.

Just depends if people wanna give them to us.

- If you know, send them your way.

That's interesting that the grave is unmarked and that they've kind of kept that as a, close to the chest.

- The family really cherish Seabiscuit and when he, as they say, he, his untimely death, they basically wanted a very low key family only type of burial, away from the press and everything.

So it was a family only event and only the family knows.

- That's really sweet.

I like that.

So a few more questions.

If you do have any last questions, please do get them into the chat or to the Q&A so that we can get them asked.

When did they start taking DNA from horses?

Do you know?

- I don't know.

I don't know if... Yeah, I don't know who I could find that out from or how I would find that out, because I feel like most things, like, once they started knowing more about how to actually look at genetics they started looking at them.

But I don't know when it started being common practice for race horses.

- Probably when the cost came down a little bit.

(laughs) Is it customary practice to silver the hooves of race horses?

- It was, I don't believe it is any more.

And I don't believe it has been for quite some time, but that was the practice.

I think it was to mostly serve as like a mantelpiece, or I've if you look up in Google, like, silvered ashtray, like horse ashtray, like, I think they were commonly used as that, which I feel like it's kind of weird, like thanks for winning us lots of money, I'm gonna put my cigarette out here now, but... (laughs) It's an odd, odd tradition, but it doesn't, it's not really done today, thank God.

- Oh, I'm with you on that.

I'm gonna jump back to a genetic question.

Can bacteria or viruses turn genes off and on?

- So yes, to a degree.

With genetic engineering now, CRISPR, which is something that I think most people have heard about in the news recently, and Perry beside a story about it yesterday.

That is using a bacterial system to turn genes on and off and edit them.

But typically speaking, like just getting bacteria or a virus, like being infected with one, it's not going to turn genes off.

I don't know if that's what the question is getting at or what, but usually if it is, it's done in the lab setting for genetic engineering.

- So, yeah, Joshua, if you have something a little more specific, if you wanna pop that in the chat.

Great.

So Kate, what sparked your interest in this field?

- Mostly working with Dr. Tammariello.

Like I had collaborated with him a little bit while I've been working on my dissertation and my doctoral research which involves humans and not horses.

And he's very interested in horses.

So we sort of started collaborating and I do ancient DNA and forensic DNA and like work on forensic cases at the university.

And he was like, hey, I can get Seabiscuit's hooves, can you do this for me?

And I was like, yeah, of course I can.

I can try.

Yeah.

I pretty much just kind of all came together and it was just, I don't know, very exciting.

Not every day someone says I have Seabiscuit, yeah.

- Yeah.

I agree.

(laughs) Super exciting.

And what do you plan to do next?

Where are your studies leading you?

- So right now I've been looking at human migration and evolution in the Pacific.

I'm looking at Y chromosome variation and like male migration for the initial settlement of the region.

That's part of my dissertation which I'm currently finishing.

From there, my other focuses have been on other populations in the Pacific.

I'm looking at mitochondrial and Y chromosome markers.

And I'm also involved with the Lyme disease research team here at the university, I'm sort of all over the place.

(laughs) - Well, it sounds like you've got lots going on.

Another question, Timothy says that he had read that Seabiscuit was a very successful sire after he went to stud, would he have, but we heard that he was not, from your talk.

Would he have been more successful with his offspring if he had gone to stud earlier?

- Probably not.

That wouldn't really change, like, what genes he has.

I think it's just more like he, so just because you're good at racing doesn't mean you have other traits that you'll contribute that will help make offspring successful.

And I think that's just unfortunately what the case was for Seabiscuit, and I don't necessarily think starting earlier would've helped.

- Thank you.

Popping into the chat for just some additional resources if people are interested, Kate had shared with us the Seabiscuit Heritage Foundation so there's all kinds of great history on there.

So please do go check that out.

Also, if you enjoyed this talk this evening, WSKG did produce a documentary on Exterminator, the race horse.

And so you can follow that link to find out more information on Exterminator as well as PBS, American Experience did a story on Seabiscuit.

So I also put that link into the chat as well.

I think we are wrapping up with our questions.

Our next Science Pub is on April 13th at 7:00 p.m. and it is going to be Architecture Plus the 21st Century Paradigm Shift: Designing for the Subliminal Brain with Ann Sussman.

So join us for a fascinating look at how the built environment impacts all of us and even reframes the history of modern architecture.

We'll explore new scientific findings and human perception, the role of empathy in architecture and more.

Ann Sussman is an architect, author and researcher who is passionate about understanding how buildings influence people.

So the link for that is in the chat.

And Kristine, can you pop that in the chat one more time for folks to go ahead and get signed up for April Science Pub?

I wanna thank Kate DeRosa.

Thank you so much for your time and expertise this evening.

It really was such a fascinating talk.

I think we all learned a lot of wonderful information.

I wanna thank Kristine Keesler.

Thank you for your help in grabbing those questions behind the scenes.

Thank you, Julia Diana, for tweeting out our event.

Again, you can follow her on Twitter @WSKGscience, #WSKGscience.

I wanna thank our director and producer for this evening, Alyssa Micha.

I wanna thank WSKG Public Media and thank you so much for tuning in tonight.

It was great to see so many of you from across the country, joining us for Science Pub and your love of continuing learning.

If you enjoyed yourself, be sure to like our Facebook page for future events, we're at Science Pub BING, you can also find us at WSKG's website.

Thank you so much for joining us and I hope that you have a great night.

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