Felicity Ogilvie, staff
Updated
Scientists have used plastic surgery to shed new light on the deadly cancer wiping out tasmanian devils.
The devils are being killed by a contagious facial tumour disease transferred from animal-to-animal through biting.
Until now, scientists assumed the animals inbreeding was to blame.
They believed the low genetic diversity in the population meant devils could not reject the invading tumour cells.
But a plastic surgery experiment is making scientists reconsider the reason why the devils are being affected by the deadly tumours.
Associate Professor Greg Woods from the Menzies Research Institute says a plastic surgeon from a local hospital came to a bush site near Hobart to do skin grafts on devils.
"He really revolutionised the whole technique and brought out all his equipment," he said.
"What was really amazing was this was done out in the field, in the back of a truck ... the surgery went beautifully so it was really quite a nice way in which to do this research."
But there was a surprising result. Associate Professor Woods had assumed that the devils would accept skin grafts from each other.
That would have confirmed the researchers theory that the animals were catching the facial cancer from each other because the devils are so inbred.
But the devil's did not accept each other's skin.
"The graft got rejected quite nicely, which shows that the devils do have enough diversity to recognise foreign tissue," he said.
"This is really good news for the devil because it means that the devils' immune system can recognise foreign tissue.
"The challenge now is to work out what is special about those tumour cells to allow them to hide from the devils' immune system.
"I think it may be that the tumour is camouflaged; it's got a camouflage."
University of Sydney Associate Professor Kathy Belov, who has been studying the devil's genetics, says the researchers will now start studying the tumour cells.
"This has probably confused us more than anything else," she said.
"But we are going to come back and start thinking about what it means and how we can use this information to help us beat the disease."
The devil is considered an endangered species and faces extinction in about three decades if a cure for the disease is not found.
Topics: endangered-and-protected-species, marsupials, tas
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