For the past 30 years, Australia’s Tasmanian devil population has been affected by an infectious cancer that has brought the species to the brink of extinction. Marsupials are very susceptible to devil facial tumor disease, which is almost always fatal to their species. Genomic interactions between the disease and its host correlate with how quickly a susceptible animal becomes infected after exposure to the pathogen.
Through sequencing the DNA of the animals and their tumors, University of South Florida Integrative Biology assistant professor Mark Margres and doctoral student Dylan Gallinson have tracked genomic interactions between demons and cancer. Their findings are published in a co-authored paper, “Intergenomic signatures of coevolution between Tasmanian devils and an infectious cancer,” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“A big question in biology is the genetic basis of disease. The classic way to determine this is through genome studies and regression analyzes that relate genes to disease risk,” Margres said. “Previously there was no technique to study the interactions between both genomes.”
Using a recently developed joint genome-wide association study, Margres and Gallinson evaluated 960 genomes and 15 years of data on captured devils to track the coevolution of devils and cancer.
“Our collaborators in Tasmania have been monitoring the spread of the disease and collecting tissue samples,” Gallinson said. “We sequenced the DNA of both the tumors and the demons to find the mutation that contributes to the manifestation of the disease.”
Their findings can inform both epidemiological models that track infectious diseases and devil management strategies that focus on saving endangered species.