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Telomere Length is a Susceptibility Marker for Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease

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Abstract

Telomeres protect chromosomes from degradation during cellular replication. In humans, it is well-documented that excessive telomere degradation is one mechanism by which cells can become cancerous. Increasing evidence from wildlife studies suggests that telomere length is positively correlated with survival and health and negatively correlated with disease infection intensity. The recently emerged devil facial tumor disease (DFTD) has led to dramatic and rapid population declines of the Tasmanian devil throughout its geographic range. Here, we tested the hypothesis that susceptibility to DFTD is negatively correlated with telomere length in devils across three populations with different infection histories. Our findings suggest telomere length is correlated with DFTD resistance in three ways. First, devils from a population with the slowest recorded increase in DFTD prevalence (West Pencil Pine) have significantly longer telomeres than those from two populations with rapid and exponential increases in prevalence (Freycinet and Narawantapu). Second, using extensive mark-recapture data obtained from a long-term demographic study, we found that individuals with relatively long telomeres tend to be infected at a significantly later age than those with shorter telomeres. Third, a hazard model showed devils with longer telomeres tended to become infected at a lower rate than those with shorter telomeres. This research provides a rare study of telomere length variation and its association with disease in a wildlife population. Our results suggest that telomere length may be a reliable marker of susceptibility to DFTD and assist with future management of this endangered species.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded under NSF Grant DEB 1316549 and NIH Grant R01-GM126563 to AS and MJ as part of the joint NSF-NIH-USDA Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases program. Animal use was approved under IACUC protocol ASAF#04392 at Washington State University. Fieldwork was funded by grants from the Australian Research Council to MJ (A00000162, LP0561120, LP0989613, DP110102656), several Eric Guiler Tasmanian devil grants, through the Save the Tasmanian devil Appeal of the University of Tasmania Foundation to R.H and M.J., and grants from the Ian Potter Foundation, the Australian Academy of Science (Margaret Middleton Fund), Estate of WV Scott, the National Geographic Society, the Mohammed bin Zayed Conservation Fund, and the Holsworth Wildlife Trust to MJ. MJ received support from an ARC Future Fellowship (FT100100250) and a Fulbright Tasmania Senior Scholarship, and RH from an ARC DECRA (DE170101116). We are grateful to M & C Walsh from Discovery Holiday Parks at Cradle Mountain, and the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service at Freycinet, Cradle Mountain and Narawntapu for providing accommodation and logistic support during fieldwork and a large number of volunteers who helped to collect data. Forico Pty Ltd. provided land access and logistic support during fieldwork. We thank Jesse Brunner for assistance with hazard model analyses. We also thank Austin Patton, Alexandra Fraik, Lauren Ricci, Omar Cornejo and Paul Hohenlohe for rich discussions that improved the quality of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164-4236, USA

    Lane E. Smith, Austin H. Patton, Patrick A. Carter & Andrew Storfer

  2. School of Biological Sciences, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 55, Hobart, TAS, 7001, Australia

    Menna E. Jones & Rodrigo Hamede

  3. Department of Pathology, University of Washington School of Medicine, 1959 NE Pacific St., Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

    Rosana Risques

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  1. Lane E. Smith
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Correspondence to Andrew Storfer.

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Smith, L.E., Jones, M.E., Hamede, R. et al. Telomere Length is a Susceptibility Marker for Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease. EcoHealth 17, 280–291 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-020-01491-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-020-01491-y

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