A new study on Thursday suggests that Tasmanian devils are beginning to adapt to one of the strangest diseases known in nature: a. Infectious cancer Spread by bites. The study found evidence that when it was first discovered in the 1990s, the disease was spreading more slowly and becoming localized in Satan’s population, rather than a very deadly and rapidly spreading epidemic. The discovery hopes that the cancer will not lead these animals to extinction.
In 1996, scientists began reporting the emergence of a specific cancer in the Tasmanian devils of Australia, which left its marsupial victims with large tumors on the mouth and throat, rapidly growing in size and proving fatal within three to five months. Eventually it became known as Devil’s Facial-Tumor Disease, or DFTD. Unlike other cancers, however, DFTD was transmissible from one animal to another, usually through the bite that the devil does regularly when fighting for social dominance or as part of their mating ritual.
In general, cancer of a person or animal is associated with a particular person, because cancerous cells are just a mutated version of the body’s cells. Cancer is usually not transmissible because our bodies are very good at detecting and killing foreign cells, including the normal and rogue cells of others. There is also an opposite cause of cancer – because our immune system is worse (though not completely useless) to identify the internal danger. Somehow, DTFDs are cancer cells Ditch Genes that program them to look a little different from other devils’ immune systems, making them contagious.
According to St Andrew Sturfer, president of genetic research at the University of Washington, D.C. Based on the genetic analysis of the tumors suggests that the disease has become mild. Diseases અને and their relationship Host – evolved over time.
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The work of his team, Published Thursday in Science, indicates that DTFD is not spreading as easily as it used to. At that time, devils with DTFD would be expected to infect an average of three to four devils. But now, an infected devil can only transmit DFTD to another devil on average. When a disease reaches this type of equilibrium, where it does not increase or decrease in population, it is considered endemic.
Staffer notes that there are three reasons why this has happened. One simple thing is that since there are fewer devils around, there are fewer infected chains to keep the disease from spreading. But devils can also begin to develop in response to cancer, so they may be more resistant to catching it. After all, there is recent evidence that these tumors may now occasionally recur immediately or disappear completely, in part. Due to the change in the knots themselves and the innate protection of the devils. Another interesting footnote they discovered, supported by other research, is that these tumors had been spreading in Satan’s population for at least a decade before their discovery in 1996.
“We think this is good news for the future of the devil, and with the increasing number of genetic analyzes and models, the extinction of species seems unlikely,” Staffour said via email. “The lower the population, the more likely the disease is to coexist with extinction.”
Transmissible cancer is rare in the animal kingdom but not heard of (no one is believed to exist in humans, except in very strange circumstances). Devils, Dogs, A species of hamster, and some species of clam have their own version. But the D.F.T.D. Has proven particularly fatal Already endangered Tasmanian devil. Since its discovery in 1996, it has contributed to 75% of the total population dying. It is also in trouble for the wider ecosystem, as the main ex-Australia is a major predator of devils in Tasmania, an island state south of Australia.
There are still some concerns about the fate of the DFTD and the Tasmanian devils. In recent years, some conservationists have begun to introduce hostage devils into the wild population. But if the work of Stauffer and his team is right, then this really jeopardizes the taming process of DFTD, as these familiar devils are not as susceptible to disease as those living in the forest. One way to prevent this is to avoid mixing captive devils into the current native population, the authors wrote without a last resort.
Another concern is that another “strain” of DFTD, known as DFTD-2, has recently emerged in southeastern Tasmania and is now evolving in its own unique way. Any plans to prevent the spread of DFTD later, such as vaccines given by oral bites, will be responsible for these various fibers, the authors caution.
For now, however, the future looks brighter than expected for the Tasmanian devil. And the work done by Staffer’s team may be just the beginning. They used a technique to study the evolution of these tumors that was used to study viruses with only a few genes. The DTFD tumor, however, contains more than 11,000 genes. So there is probably no reason why the same methods cannot be used to study the evolutionary pathway of all kinds of infectious diseases caused by bacteria and fungi.
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