Comments on: Hope for Taz? A Colony of Tasmanian Devils Resists the Species’ Deadly Disease http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/03/11/hope-for-taz-a-colony-of-tasmanian-devils-resists-the-species-deadly-disease/ 80beats is DISCOVER's news aggregator, weaving together the choicest tidbits from the best articles covering the day's most compelling topics. Mon, 21 May 2012 04:06:35 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Ed http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/03/11/hope-for-taz-a-colony-of-tasmanian-devils-resists-the-species-deadly-disease/comment-page-1/#comment-132974 Ed Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:26:32 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/?p=11554#comment-132974 To be fair, they also say that these potentially resistant devils live in the NW corner of the island where the contagious cancer hasn't spread to yet. The only supporting piece of evidence for the idea that these devils could be resistant is that in the margins of this area, none of the genetically distinct 20% have caught the tumour yet, and that's only cited with a personal communication. So basically, it's a paper that catalogues some diversity in devil immune genes and hypothesises that this might give them a survival advantage, but it doesn't actually provide much in the way of evidence for that. To be fair, they also say that these potentially resistant devils live in the NW corner of the island where the contagious cancer hasn’t spread to yet. The only supporting piece of evidence for the idea that these devils could be resistant is that in the margins of this area, none of the genetically distinct 20% have caught the tumour yet, and that’s only cited with a personal communication.

So basically, it’s a paper that catalogues some diversity in devil immune genes and hypothesises that this might give them a survival advantage, but it doesn’t actually provide much in the way of evidence for that.

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