A group call the “Kimberley Toad Hunters” recommend that the Australian government offer a bounty for every toad kill. The motto of the group is: “If everyone hunt toads, soon there would be no one to hunt!” Tizard became interest in Agami toads even before he saw them. Geelong is in southern Victoria, over. But one day at a conference, he was sitting next to a molecular biologist who was studying these toads and told him that despite their best efforts, toads continue to spread. “She notic that it was very sad and it was a pity that there was no new approach to solving this problem.
We have the tools to turn off genes
Tizard recall Well I sat down and began to think. I reason Czech Republic Phone Number List like this: toxins are a product of toad metabolism. This means that enzymes are involv in their production, and enzymes must have genes that encode them. At the same time. So can’t we “turn offthe toxin?” To help Tizard enlist a young scientist Caitlin Cooper, the owner of shoulder-length chestnut hair and an infectious laugh, she came to Australia from Massachusetts. No one had ever it the aga toad’s genome before, so Cooper had yet to figure out how to do it.
The gene that is responsible for producing
It turn out that toad eggs must first be USA CFO wash and then pierc with a very thin pipette, and this must be done quickly before the cells begin to divide. “I’ve been practicing microinjections for quite some time,” Cooper told me. For starters, she decid to change the color of the toads. The key gene for skin pigmentation in toads (and in humans, by the way, too) codes for the enzyme tyrosinase, which controls the production of melanin. Cooper reason that if this gene was turn off, the result would be light-color toads, not dark ones.