Saving the Devil Is in the DNA Details.

• Position: TASMANIAN DEVIL

Tasmanian devils are known for their ferocity, but these fuzzy marsupials' tendency to fight is killing them: Over the past 20 years, tens of thousands have died of a contagious cancer that spreads when the animals bite each other. Devil facial tumor disease first appeared in 1996. Some populations have declined by more than 90% from the combination of cancer and reduced reproduction, and the overall number of devils has dropped by 80%.

Scientists predicted the disease would drive the Tasmanian devil to extinction, but a study from the University of Idaho, Washington State University, and the University of Tasmania indicates there is hope hidden in devil DNA. "If a disease comes in and knocks out 90% of the individuals, you might predict the 10% who survive are somehow genetically different," says Paul Hohenlohe, assistant professor of biological sciences at Ul. "What we were looking for was the parts of the genome that show that difference."

Tasmanian researchers sent samples from three groups of devils, which live on different parts of the island, to WSU and Hohenlohe to examine. Hohenlohe used technologies in Ul's Genomics Resources Core and Computational Resources Core to scan the genomes of nearly 300 individual animals, comparing close to 1,000,000 snippets of DNA across each animal. "It's a really fine-scale scan across the genome," he says.

The scan found two pieces of the Tasmanian devil genome that showed signs of evolutionary change in response to the cancer and the force of natural selection it imposed. Over the course of just a handful of generations, more Tasmanian devils were bom with genetic differences at these two gene sites, which are related to...