 From very early in her career , Bowling wrote about educating horse breeders on genetic diseases in purebred animals and how to deal with these conditions . She performed a number of studies on the Arabian horse breed , including research into one of the genetic diseases that affects Arabians , cerebellar abiotrophy ( CA ) . In 1985 , she created a breeding herd at UCD of horses known to carry CA , and this small group provided preliminary DNA data for researchers . Bowling 's own studies of CA were unpublished at the time of her death , but she is credited with demonstrating that the condition had a recessive mode of genetic inheritance and was likely the result of a single mutated allele . A DNA marker test for the condition was developed by her successors at UCD , which became available to the public in 2008 . In 2011 , the causative mutation for cerebellar abiotrophy was identified , and the condition was conclusively established as an autosomal recessive . 
