October 5, 2020
By Jack Guy
Eleven Tasmanian devils (click here) have been reintroduced to mainland Australia, more than 3,000 years after they died out there.
The carnivorous marsupials have been released into a 400-hectare (988-acre) wildlife sanctuary north of Sydney, New South Wales, Australian NGO Aussie Ark said in a statement.
"In 100 years, we are going to be looking back at this day as the day that set in motion the ecological restoration of an entire country," said Tim Faulkner, president of Aussie Ark.
"Not only is this the reintroduction of one of Australia's beloved animals, but of an animal that will engineer the entire environment around it, restoring and rebalancing our forest ecology after centuries of devastation from introduced foxes and cats and other invasive predators."...
August 6, 2020
Pullman, Washington - A rare, transmissible tumor (click here) has brought the iconic Tasmanian devil to the brink of extinction, but new research by scientists at Washington State University and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle indicates hope for the animals’ survival and possibly new treatment for human cancers.
The study, published in Genetics on Aug. 1, found a single genetic mutation that leads to reduced growth of a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils in the wild.
“This gene is implicated in human prostate and colon cancers,” said Andrew Storfer, professor of biological sciences at WSU. “While the findings hold the most immediate promise to help save the world’s few remaining Tasmanian devils, these results could also someday translate to human health.”
The research team, led by Storfer and and Mark Margres, now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, studied the genomes of cases of devil facial tumor disease, or DFTD, that regressed spontaneously — that is, the cancer began disappearing on its own....
August 21, 2020
Abstract
Spontaneous tumor regression (click here) has been documented in a small proportion of human cancer patients, but the specific mechanisms underlying tumor regression without treatment are not well understood. Tasmanian devils are threatened with extinction from a transmissible cancer due to universal susceptibility and a near 100% case fatality rate. In over 10,000 cases, <20 instances of natural tumor regression have been detected. Previous work in this system has focused on Tasmanian devil genetic variation associated with the regression phenotype. Here, we used comparative and functional genomics to identify tumor genetic variation associated with tumor regression. We show that a single point mutation in the 5′ untranslated region of the putative tumor suppressor RASL11A significantly contributes to tumor regression. RASL11A was expressed in regressed tumors but silenced in wild-type, nonregressed tumors, consistent with RASL11A downregulation in human cancers. Induced RASL11A expression significantly reduced tumor cell proliferation in vitro. The RAS pathway is frequently altered in human cancers, and RASL11A activation may provide a therapeutic treatment option for Tasmanian devils as well as a general mechanism for tumor inhibition....
