The primary threat from cane toads comes from bufotoxins, a group of related, complicated chemicals that bind to a protein found on the surface of cells called ATP1A1. This protein helps control the traffic of ions across the cell membrane. Andrew Pask, who is leading Colossal's marsupial efforts, told Ars that animals in the cane toad's native range in Africa share a mutation in ATP1A1 that greatly reduces bufotoxin binding. Now, the team has engineered that change into the genome of a marsupial stem cell line and showed that it boosted resistance by a factor of over 6,000. (A manuscript describing some of this work is available.)
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