#it’s likely an adaptation to be more resistant to chytrid

[plaguedocboi]

Neither do they

They are literally so weird

[nirdosh-jagota]

Can Biotech Save Endangered Species? The Role of Conservation Genomics

The rapid loss of biodiversity is a pressing global concern. Species are disappearing at an unprecedented rate, largely driven by habitat destruction, climate change, and human activities. In response, biotechnology, particularly conservation genomics, is emerging as a powerful tool to combat extinction and protect endangered species. Conservation genomics leverages advanced genomic technologies to analyze and utilize the genetic information of species, enabling targeted efforts to safeguard biodiversity. This article explores how biotechnology is transforming conservation strategies, its challenges, and the potential it holds for the future of endangered species.

Understanding Conservation Genomics

Conservation genomics involves studying the genetic material of species to inform conservation strategies. By examining DNA sequences, scientists can assess genetic diversity, identify populations at risk, and develop interventions to address threats. This approach is vital because genetic diversity underpins a species' ability to adapt to changing environments and resist diseases.

For example, researchers studying endangered species like the cheetah have found alarmingly low genetic diversity due to historical population bottlenecks. Conservation genomics helps pinpoint such vulnerabilities, allowing targeted efforts to mitigate the risks associated with inbreeding and genetic uniformity.

Genetic Diversity and Its Role in Survival

Genetic diversity is the foundation of a species' resilience. Populations with higher genetic variability are better equipped to adapt to environmental changes and new challenges like emerging diseases. Conservation genomics identifies genes linked to adaptability, enabling scientists to prioritize populations or individuals with desirable traits for breeding programs.

For instance, genetic analysis of coral species has revealed specific genetic markers associated with heat tolerance. By identifying and propagating corals with these traits, researchers aim to restore coral reefs more resilient to rising ocean temperatures. This work underscores the critical role of genetics in developing species' ability to survive environmental stressors.

Applications of Biotechnology in Conservation

Genetic Rescue

Genetic rescue is a biotechnology application designed to introduce new genetic material into small, isolated populations. This process reduces the risks of inbreeding and enhances genetic diversity. For example, genetic rescue has been used to revitalize populations of the Florida panther, a subspecies of cougar, by introducing genetic material from closely related cougar populations.

Cloning Endangered Species

Cloning is another promising technology in conservation. Scientists have successfully cloned endangered species like the black-footed ferret using preserved genetic material from deceased individuals. These efforts aim to increase population size and genetic diversity. While still in its early stages, cloning holds immense potential for restoring species that are on the brink of extinction.

Gene Editing

Gene editing tools, particularly CRISPR-Cas9, are opening new possibilities for conservation. By editing specific genes, scientists can enhance traits like disease resistance or adaptability. For instance, researchers are exploring how gene editing might be used to help amphibians combat the chytrid fungus, a pathogen decimating amphibian populations worldwide.

De-extinction

De-extinction, or the resurrection of extinct species, is a controversial yet fascinating application of biotechnology. Using advanced genomic techniques, scientists aim to bring back species like the woolly mammoth. While the ethical and ecological implications are debated, de-extinction research contributes valuable insights into genetic engineering and its potential applications for conservation.

Overcoming Challenges in Conservation Genomics

While the potential of conservation genomics is immense, several challenges must be addressed for these technologies to reach their full potential.

Data Availability

Many endangered species lack comprehensive genetic data, which is crucial for effective conservation genomics. Collecting and analyzing genetic information requires significant resources, which are often scarce in conservation efforts. Expanding genomic databases and improving access to these resources is essential for progress.

Ethical Concerns

The use of advanced biotechnologies in conservation raises ethical questions. For instance, cloning and gene editing involve manipulating life at a fundamental level, prompting debates about the potential unintended consequences. Ensuring that these technologies are used responsibly and transparently is critical to maintaining public trust and ethical integrity.

Technical Limitations

Although gene editing and cloning have made significant strides, these technologies are not without limitations. Success rates for cloning are still low, and unintended off-target effects in gene editing remain a concern. Continued research and technological advancements are needed to refine these methods and make them more reliable.

The Role of Biotechnology in Habitat Restoration

Conservation genomics is not limited to individual species; it also plays a vital role in ecosystem and habitat restoration. By analyzing the genetic composition of entire ecosystems, scientists can understand how different species interact and depend on one another. This knowledge helps guide restoration efforts that prioritize the recovery of keystone species and maintain ecological balance.

For example, genetic studies of soil microbial communities are helping restore degraded ecosystems. These microorganisms play a crucial role in nutrient cycling and plant growth. By reintroducing microbial species with beneficial traits, researchers are improving soil health and promoting vegetation recovery in areas affected by deforestation or agriculture.

Key Roles of Biotechnology in Conservation

Conservation genomics analyzes DNA to protect endangered species.

Genetic rescue boosts diversity in small populations.

Cloning revives endangered species and enhances genetic diversity.

Gene editing combats diseases and enhances adaptability.

Ecosystem restoration uses genetic data to rebuild habitats.

Future Directions for Conservation Genomics

The future of conservation genomics lies in integrating emerging technologies with traditional conservation practices. Advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence are enhancing the analysis of genomic data, making it easier to identify patterns and predict outcomes. These tools are particularly useful for studying large, complex datasets generated by genomic research.

Additionally, interdisciplinary collaboration is key. Conservation genomics benefits from partnerships between geneticists, ecologists, and conservation practitioners. By working together, these experts can develop strategies that combine cutting-edge technology with practical conservation efforts.

Another exciting avenue is the use of citizen science and community engagement. Public participation in data collection and monitoring can expand the reach of conservation projects while fostering a greater appreciation for biodiversity among local communities.

In Conclusion

Biotechnology, through conservation genomics, offers innovative solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing endangered species. By enhancing genetic diversity, mitigating extinction risks, and supporting habitat restoration, these technologies are reshaping conservation strategies. While challenges like ethical considerations and resource limitations persist, ongoing research and collaboration hold immense promise for the future. Embracing these tools could be a game-changer in preserving biodiversity and ensuring a thriving planet for generations to come.

[myfrogcroaked]

“In the best-case scenario, frogs that survive the fungus may pass down their resistance, or at least produce stronger offspring, helping the animals adapt to the threat faster than evolution alone. Even if that doesn’t happen, Kolby says the frogs will be more likely to survive if there are 10,000 adults out there producing tadpoles instead of just 1,000.”

Source: National Geographic

[nedsecondline]

Fungal diseases are on the rise. Is environmental change to blame?

Oops! Another story and facts to deny.

Fungi are everywhere — from the mushrooms that decompose fallen logs in the forest, to the mold that grows in your bathtub, to the microscopic fungal cells that reside naturally on your skin. Scientists estimate there are 1.5 million species of fungi on the planet. They’re a diverse group, bunched together by their ability to use digestive enzymes to break down and absorb nutrients from their surroundings — a characteristic that makes some of them great decomposers. Fungi are, in essence, nature’s first compost bin. Many of them also help plants grow or carry out other important ecosystem functions.

And some fungi are pathogens, causing disease in plants and animals, including humans. Throughout human history, fungal diseases have been pretty rare. Those that do arise tend to be only skin deep (think athlete’s foot or ringworm). Our complex immune systems and our hot bodies — most fungi can’t survive our internal temperatures — have largely protected us from major life-threatening fungal outbreaks.

“We live in a sea of fungi, but probably less than 20 to 30 species are common pathogens in humans,” says John Perfect, an infectious disease specialist at Duke University.

Invasive fungal infections — the really bad kind that infect the heart, blood, brain, bones and other internal organs — kill about 1.5 million people worldwide every year. According to some estimates, at least as many people die from the top 10 invasive fungal diseases as from tuberculosis or malaria. Perfect and other experts say these deadly diseases are on the rise. Some fungal pathogens that infect humans are emerging in parts of the world where they’ve never been found. In hospital patients, these life-threatening fungal infections are becoming more difficult to treat. Scientists and doctors are beginning to trace these worrying trends to human activity and changes in the environment, and working to figure out what we can do differently to reduce the threat.

Emergent Strain

The rise of human fungal infections coincided largely with the onset of the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s, says Robin May, a microbiologist at the University of Birmingham in the UK. Fungal diseases flourished in the severely immune-compromised population of people with AIDS. One fungal disease in particular — cryptococcosis — became an AIDs-defining illness in the 1980s. While the advent of antiretroviral therapy substantially reduced the number of people getting — and dying — from cryptococcosis, the disease remains a big problem in some parts of the world.

The main cause of the disease is a common fungus found in soils all over the world called Cryptococcus neoformans. In some people with cryptococcosis, the fungus invades the lungs, causing pneumonia and other breathing problems. In some cases it spreads to the nervous system and causes swelling around the brain. More than 1 million people with HIV/AIDS worldwide are affected with cryptococcal meningitis each year. The infection often is fatal in those with weakened immune systems, though it’s rare in people who are not immunocompromised.

The emergence of Cryptococcus gattii in the Pacific Northwest in 1999 raised concerns that a changing climate can increase the range of fungal pathogens. Map Courtesy of American Society for Microbiology

Then in 1999, doctors on Vancouver Island in Canada diagnosed six people with what appeared to be a more virulent strain of cryptoccosis. None of the infected individuals had medical conditions, such as HIV, that would weaken their immune systems. They were otherwise healthy.

Researchers tracked the new infections to a different species of fungus — Cryptococcus gattii — a fungus that is more commonly found in the tropics. How the fungus made its way to Canada’s west coast is anybody’s guess. But it colonized its new, northern environment causing infections over the next decade in healthy individuals across the Pacific Northwest before starting to wane.

The emergence of C. gattii in the Pacific Northwest raised the notion that changes in climate could potentially increase the range of some fungal pathogens, according to May, who studies why some fungi are more harmful to humans than others. Researchers are now trying to understand how long-term changes in weather patterns — temperature or moisture, for instance — might impact human exposures to C. gattii and other fungal pathogens in the environment.

Links to Climate Change

Very few fungi can survive extreme heat or freezing temperatures. Instead, most thrive in moist, temperate climates. As the world warms, that temperate range is increasing, says May. And the fungi are keeping pace.

Fungal diseases cause more than two-thirds of all crop losses worldwide. Photo Courtesy of DuPont Pioneer

Some of the clearest reports come from agriculture, where fungi cause more than two-thirds of all crop diseases worldwide. “Major fungal diseases such as rice blast, wheat stem rust and corn smut challenge the global food supply,” says Sarah Gurr, chair in food security at the University of Exeter in the UK.

She and colleagues have shown in the northern hemisphere that fungal pests are shifting poleward at a rate of 7.6 kilometers (4.7 miles) per year. This means new fungal threats for some of the world’s most important grain producers, including the northern prairies of Europe and North America, says Gurr.

Fungal diseases are having their moment in wildlife too. Over the past 30 years, a chytrid fungus has led to the extinction of more than 200 species of frogs, leading to the greatest disease-caused loss of biodiversity in recorded history. Deadly white nose syndrome — named for the white fungal growth that characterizes it — has been spreading through bat populations in the eastern half of North America since 2007.

The proportion of plant and animal disease alerts recorded by the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases attributable to fungi has risen in recent years. Diagram courtesy of Nature Publishing Group

Fungal species can only cause disease if they can survive at host temperatures, explains Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist and immunologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. Casadevall and others worry that global warming could drive the evolution of more heat-tolerant fungi — a change that could have big implications for human health.

“A major factor protecting us from fungal disease is the difference in temperature between the human body and the outside environment. As fungi adapt to living at higher temperatures, we may begin to lose some of that natural protection,” says Casadevall. For a heat-tolerant fungus, the human body might start to look less like a sweltering furnace and more like a balmy retreat.

Casadevall and colleagues have demonstrated that some fungi may already be adapting to warmer temperatures. When they analyzed thermal susceptibility data for several strains of yeast (a type of fungus) gathered since 1985, they found an increase in the past 20 years in the maximum temperature that some strains could withstand. The findings, say the researchers, are a “clear warning that global warming may cause fungi to become significantly more thermally resistant,” though it’s not possible yet to predict which species may become new human disease threats.

Non-Environmental Factors

The rise in invasive fungal diseases may be due to a number of non-environmental factors too, including increased susceptibility due to medical procedures.

“Advances in medicine have come with a few trade-offs, one of those being a rise in human fungal infections,” says Jack Edwards, a medical mycologist at Harbor/UCLA Medical Center in California. Edwards studies life-threatening infections due to yeast in hospitalized patients.

The CDC estimates there are roughly 46,000 cases of hospital-associated invasive candidiasis each year, a number that’s increased over the past two decades. It’s one of the most common bloodstream infections in hospitalized patients, and is caused by Candida yeasts that normally live in the gut and on the skin with few problems. But in patients with weakened immune systems — people on cancer chemotherapy or who have undergone an organ transplant, for instance — Candida can be a big problem, causing deaths in about 30 percent of patients with bloodstream infections.

“Every time you take an antibiotic, you’re killing off some of the good bacteria in your gut that keep the growth of harmful organisms such as pathogenic yeast in check.” – John PerfectOveruse of antibiotics may be another factor leading to more life-threatening fungal infections. The human gut microbiome — the living things within our intestinal tract — consists of a few trillion organisms, including bacteria, viruses and even fungi. It’s a whole community of microscopic bugs — some of them helpful, some of them harmful. Our health depends on just the right balance.

Most antibiotics don’t discriminate between good and bad bacteria, explains Perfect. “Every time you take an antibiotic, you’re killing off some of the good bacteria in your gut that keep the growth of harmful organisms such as pathogenic yeast in check,” he says.

Drug Resistance

Invasive fungal infections can be some of the trickiest medical problems to treat. A dearth of antifungal medications is one reason, says Edwards. There just aren’t a lot of drug options for preventing or treating fungal disease.

“We have vaccines for parasites, viruses, bacteria. But no fungal vaccines,” says Edwards. He’s working with collaborators to develop a vaccine against candidiasis that could be given to transplant recipients, intensive care patients and others at high risk to prevent the life-threatening yeast infection.

Drug-resistant fungal infections complicate the picture.

Some experts fear that rampant use of single-target-site fungicides — chemicals with one very specific means of killing fungi — in agriculture could translate into more drug-resistant fungal infections in humans.

Aspergillus fumigatis, a fungus that causes lung infections, is showing signs of drug resistance in the environment. Photo courtesy of Yale Rosen

In Europe, the Americas and Asia, researchers have found drug-resistant strains of Aspergillus fumigatus in garden soil, plant seeds, rice fields and compost. The fungus causes a disease called aspergillosis, which can cause breathing problems in both immune-suppressed and healthy people.

The discovery of drug-resistant aspergillosis in patients who have never before taken antifungal medications suggests that drug resistance in some cases could be coming from the environment and not from previous use of antifungals, says Gurr.

She says we should limit use of agricultural fungicides that are structurally similar to medically important antifungal medications. More research is needed too, she says, on the basic life cycle of fungal plant pathogens. Such knowledge, says Gurr, could lead to more judicious use by helping farmers to better plan when in the growth cycle to apply fungicides to their crops.

Perfect says fungal diseases have become a “silent” epidemic among certain groups — cancer patients, people with AIDS and the severely ill in hospitals. And the problem seems to only be exacerbating with time: Over the past year, reports have emerged of yet another — frequently drug resistant — hospital-associated fungal threat, Candida auris, in at least 16 countries around the world. As the environment around us changes and our natural defenses become more tenuous, Perfect warns, we need to take steps to protect ourselves, especially the most vulnerable among us.

UPDATED 04.29.17: Fungal diseases cause more than two-thirds of all crop diseases worldwide.

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