Scientists have long puzzled over how and why the fatal facial tumour disease that continues to ravage populations of Tasmanian devils in the wild became a transmissible cancer, given tumours usually grow exclusively in the organism where their cell of origin derives from. An international study that involved scientists from the CeMM Research Centre for […]
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Since the deadly facial tumour disease that has ravaged Tasmanian devil populations in the wild was first observed over 20 years ago, scientists have puzzled over the circumstances that caused it both to emerge, and to spread so rapidly. Two studies published recently provide some insight and perspective on the increasing incidence of contagious cancers, […]
Continue ReadingResearch by an international team of scientists, published at the end of August in the journal Nature Communications, shows two regions in the genomes of Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) appear to be evolving in response to the fatal facial tumour disease that has ravaged populations in the wild for almost 20 years. Evolutionary geneticist Andrew […]
Continue ReadingIt was curiosity about the reasons for Tasmanian devils’ low genetic diversity, a characteristic that was often noted but never fully explained in many of the papers she was reading, that prompted University of Tasmania PhD candidate Anna Brüniche-Olsen to discover why. The results of her study, the first to provide a ‘quantitative assessment of […]
Continue ReadingIn the lead-up to the federal election the former federal government announced it would not provide $4 million in funding for a project submitted under the Caring for Country program by the Save The Tasmanian Devil Program. The Devil Island Project would have enabled the relocation of Tasmanian devils from insurance populations, that are free […]
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