Evoluutio pelastaa pussipirun?

Vaihteeksi jotain positiivista uutista Tasmanian tuholaisestakin ja samalla hyvä esimerkki siitä miten evoluutio toimii. Likimain täystuhoa kylvänyt tarttuva syöpä on aiheuttanut lajille melkoisen valintapaineen, joka näyttää nyt saavan aikaan geneettisiä muutoksia tautia vastaan:

"Tasmanian devils are evolving in response to a highly lethal and contagious form of cancer"
...
"two regions in the genomes of Australia's iconic marsupials are changing in response to the rapid spread of devil facial tumor disease (DFTD), a nearly 100 percent fatal and transmissible cancer first detected in 1996."
...
"Despite models that predicted extinction, populations of Tasmanian devils at long-diseased sites persist."
...
"If a disease comes in and knocks out 90 percent of the individuals, you might predict the 10 percent who survive are somehow genetically different"
...
"Storfer and colleagues identified two small genomic regions in the DNA samples from all three sites that exhibited significant changes in response to the strong selection imposed by the disease. Five of seven genes in the two regions were related to cancer or immune function in other mammals, suggesting that Tasmanian devils are indeed evolving resistance to DFTD."

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-tasmanian-devils-evolve-resist-deadly.html