Watson School of Biological Sciences, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724, USA.
Science. 2010 Jan 1;327(5961):84-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1180616.
The Tasmanian devil, a marsupial carnivore, is endangered because of the emergence of a transmissible cancer known as devil facial tumor disease (DFTD). This fatal cancer is clonally derived and is an allograft transmitted between devils by biting. We performed a large-scale genetic analysis of DFTD with microsatellite genotyping, a mitochondrial genome analysis, and deep sequencing of the DFTD transcriptome and microRNAs. These studies confirm that DFTD is a monophyletic clonally transmissible tumor and suggest that the disease is of Schwann cell origin. On the basis of these results, we have generated a diagnostic marker for DFTD and identify a suite of genes relevant to DFTD pathology and transmission. We provide a genomic data set for the Tasmanian devil that is applicable to cancer diagnosis, disease evolution, and conservation biology.
袋獾，一种有袋类肉食动物，由于一种名为“袋獾面部肿瘤疾病”（DFTD）的传染性癌症的出现而濒临灭绝。这种致命的癌症是克隆衍生的，通过咬噬在袋獾之间异体传播。我们通过微卫星基因分型、线粒体基因组分析以及袋獾面部肿瘤疾病转录组和 microRNAs 的深度测序，对 DFTD 进行了大规模的遗传分析。这些研究证实，DFTD 是一种单系克隆传播的肿瘤，并表明该疾病源自许旺氏细胞。基于这些结果，我们生成了 DFTD 的诊断标记，并确定了与 DFTD 病理和传播相关的一整套基因。我们提供了一个适用于癌症诊断、疾病演变和保护生物学的袋獾基因组数据集。
