More than a decade ago, two University of Minnesota professors thought the idea of decoding a horse's DNA was "a pipe dream."
Today, it's a paper published in the journal Science.
Profs. Jim Mickelson and Stephanie Valberg are two authors of that study and part of an international team that has spent years investigating, mapping and now sequencing the genome of the domestic horse.
The discovery is being celebrated by a scientific community that says it could change how diseases in both horses and humans are diagnosed and treated.
It already has, the professors say.
Scientists released a draft sequence of the horse genome in 2007, and researchers began using it immediately, Valberg said.
Without the sequence, it had taken the researchers four years to find the genetic basis for a disease fatal in foals called glycogen branching enzyme deficiency.
They also tracked down the cause of another affliction, a painful muscle cramping called "tying-up disease," between six months and a year.