[Mike]

Hello to anyone still on this site.
I am continuing to report here because I believe our original
thinking of following what appears in our natural enviornment, will
beyond question, underline our concerns surrounding aerosol spraying.
Best to one and all,
Bridget

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/endangered-
species/mg18925375.200

Tasmanian devils felled by rare cancer
01 February 2006
NewScientist.com news service

A BIZARRE infectious cancer seems to be the cause of the fatal
facial tumours that are wiping out Tasmanian devils, the world’s
largest surviving carnivorous marsupial. The disease, which has
killed at least a third of the wild population since the mid-1990s,
had now infected devils across more than half the island.
Early analysis of the tumours suggested that the animals may be
passing on cancerous cells during fights (New Scientist, 6 July
2005). Now a team led by Anne-Maree Pearse of Tasmania’s department
of primary industries has performed a genetic analysis of tumour
cells from 37 animals.

Results from the first 11 animals reveal that all the tumours
contain cells with 13 grossly abnormal chromosomes, instead of the
usual 14 healthy ones (Nature, DOI:10.1038/439549a). They were
genetically identical whatever their stage of development,
suggesting they did not arise in the animals’ own tissue. “The
cancerous cell line is leading a sort of independent existence,”
Pearse says.

This cell line probably arose in one devil with a cancer, she says.
Cancer genomes are usually very unstable, but somehow this line was
stable and persistent. The only other known example of a
similar “allograft” tumour disease, transmitted by direct transfer,
is of a venereal sarcoma that is passed between dogs while mating.
From issue 2537 of New Scientist magazine, 01 February 2006, page 20