Wednesday, July 2, 2003

The birds and the bees are getting a little boost from a biotechnology firm in Fort Collins.

Nine weeks ago, a healthy filly named First Lady was born at a Fort Collins farm; her sex nearly guaranteed even before she was conceived thanks to technology developed by Fort Collins biotechnology firm XY Inc.

The cell-sorting technology developed at XY Inc., 1108 N. Lemay Ave., separates sperm carrying the X chromosome and sperm carrying the Y chromosome.

X chromosomes produce females and Y chromosomes produce males.

So, to guarantee a filly, only sperm carrying the X chromosome are inseminated into the mare.

First Lady's mother -- Call Me Madam -- was born in 1998, the first horse in the world born using the cell-sorting technology that is 90 percent effective in guaranteeing the sex of an animal before it is conceived.

Her father -- Augustus Primus, born a year after Call Me Madam -- was the first stallion born using the same technology.

That makes First Lady -- also the product of sex selection -- the first sex-selected offspring of two sex-selected parents.

"This is not cloning and it is not genetic engineering," said Mervyn Jacobson, president and chief executive officer at XY Inc. "We don't change anything or harm anything."

Breeders are often disappointed when foals are not the desired sex, Jacobson said.

"In some cases, those animals are abandoned or mistreated or sometimes slaughtered, just because they're the wrong sex. We want every foal to be a wanted foal."

With more than 250,000 registered bloodline births per year, the scientific advancement has huge financial possibilities for breeders who can choose the sex of their foals and for the company that developed the technology.

"You can make a lot more money off a stallion than a mare," said Rebecca Dixon, equine consultant for Fort Collins' horsesportsworld.com, which helps track and organize equine sporting events worldwide.

"There would be breeders and buyers who would be interested depending on how expensive it is."

There are those who prefer stallions because they can reproduce more often than mares, who have an 11-month gestation period.

Stallions, however, have a reputation as more difficult to train, while mares are considered more gentle and suitable for children to train and show.

"If you are breeding for sales to youths, you would want to be able to breed mares," she said.

It's an emotional decision for horse breeders, said Allison Lindsey, equine specialist at XY Inc.

"Horse breeders typically have a preference for either males or females" depending on what they're bred for ... whether they are polo horses or jumpers, Lindsey said.

"A lot of breeders just want to have males ... they want to continue the blood line on the farm. People get fired up about it."

The birth of First Lady marks the first attempt at using the technology on a second generation, Lindsey said.

XY Inc. has successfully used the technology in cattle and is working with sheep, pigs and rare species.

First Lady's birth is clear evidence the technology does not harm the reproductive capabilities of the horses XY is producing, Jacobson said.

"It shows the safety of the technology a little more and puts people's minds at ease," Lindsey said.

"People get skeptical about what type of damage we're doing to horses and wonder if we're creating mutants," she said.

"This shows we can breed these horses and get absolutely normal offspring."

Jacobson said cell sorting and artificial insemination could cost between $3,000 and $5,000.

It's a $300 million market for the U.S. horse industry alone, according to XY's estimates. And twice that worldwide.

XY Inc. was formed in 1996 as a collaborative effort between Colorado State University Research Foundation and Cytomation, Inc.

"The birth of this lovely filly is justification to go forward with additional development work to bring to market these sex-selection breeding techniques for horses," Jacobson said.