In a revolutionary approach, scientists are hoping that modifying the marsupial’s genes to resist cane toads’ toxin will save it from extinction
In a laboratory in the University of Melbourne earlier this year, PhD student Pierre Ibri was running an experiment that could prove to be a critical step in an audacious plan to save Australia’s endangered northern quoll.
In plastic trays were groups of tissue cells of another Australian marsupial – the common and mouse-like fat-tailed dunnart – that he was subjecting to the toxin of the cane toad, an invasive amphibian that has cut a swathe through populations of native animals in Australia’s north.
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