SHANE MCLEOD: Researchers who are trying to find ways to save the Tasmanian devil from a contagious facial cancer are having to rethink their approach.
The devils are being killed by a contagious facial tumour disease, and the scientists have always assumed the animals inbreeding is to blame. But a plastic surgery experiment is making scientists reconsider the reason why the devils are being affected by the deadly tumours.
Felicity Ogilvie, reports from Hobart.
FELICITY OGILVIE: Plastic surgery is yet another tool that scientists are using to fight the facial tumour disease that is killing the Tasmanian devil but it is creating more questions than answers at the moment.
KATHY BELOV: So this experiment was carried out to see if devils were able to reject foreign tissue because we have been saying for a long time that devils have low genetic diversity so therefore they should essentially be able to exchange organs or skin. In this case there was an experiment carried out where skin was transplanted between five different devils and to our surprise the devils actually rejected the foreign skin.
FELICITY OGILVIE: That's Associate Professor Kathy Belov. She's a scientist from the University of Sydney who has been studying the devil's genetics. She provided researchers in Hobart with a map of the devil's genes that helped them choose the most similar animals to experiment on.
Associate Professor Greg Woods from the Menzies Research Institute says a plastic surgeon from a local hospital came up to a bush site near Hobart to do the skin grafts.
GREG WOODS: He really revolutionised the whole technique and brought out all his equipment. What was really amazing was this was done out in the field, in the back of a truck and that the skill of the surgeon plus all the veterinary assistance, the surgery went beautifully so it was really quite a nice way in which to do this research.
FELICITY OGILVIE: Associate Professor Woods assumed that the devils would accept skin grafts from each other. That would have confirmed the researchers theory that the reason why the animals are catching the contagious facial cancer from each other is because the devils are so inbred.
But the devil's didn't accept each other's skin.
GREG WOODS: The graft got rejected quite nicely which shows that the devil's do have enough diversity to recognise foreign tissue.
FELICITY OGILVIE: Do you know then why they don't recognise the tumour as being foreign?
GREG WOODS: Oh, there is something special about the tumour cells which we are working very hard to find out.
FELICITY OGILVIE: Associate Professor Kathy Belov says the researchers will now start studying the tumour cells.
KATHY BELOV: This has probably confused us more than anything else but you know, 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.
GREG WOODS: What we are going to be doing is growing out the tumour cells in culture and then we'll extract all the proteins and run them onto a gel so we'll take those proteins out and just analyse them at a molecular level.
FELICITY OGILVIE: And what are you looking for?
GREG WOODS: We are trying to see what's missing or what's different about those tumour cells that the immune system doesn't see.
FELICITY OGILVIE: Finding out more about the tumour will help the researchers work on a vaccine and the devils need all the help they can get - 80 per cent of the wild population has already been wiped out and the animals are headed for extinction.
SHANE MCLEOD: Felicity Ogilvie.
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