Tracking Taz's transmissible cancer

摘要

The contagious facial cancer devastating populations of the endangered Tasmanian devil in Australia probably originated from a female animal, a genomic analysis finds. Elizabeth Murchison and Michael Stratton at the Weilcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, and their colleagues sequenced the genomes of two healthy Tasmanian devils and two geographically distinct tumours derived from the cancer, which is spread through biting.