Tasmanian devils’ contagious facial cancers sequenced for first time
Credit: Gapvoy/Shutterstock
Although scientists have been aware of the two cancers for some time, little has been known about their evolution. To investigate, Hamede and his colleagues assembled a Tasmanian devil reference genome and compared it with DNA sequenced from 78 DFT1 and 41 DFT2 tumours. The team then constructed ‘family trees’ of these tumours to track their origin and mapped their mutations to build a picture of how the diseases have evolved.
The team found that DFT2 didn’t arise until 2011, roughly three years before it was first detected in a male devil in southeast Tasmania. Unlike DFT1, DFT2 is found in only a small region of the island. The cancer is genetically similar to DFT1, but it mutates around three times faster. This could be due to the tumour cells dividing more quickly, providing more opportunity for mutations to occur, says Hamede. “The big question is whether these mutations are selective or not,” he says.
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