Bison's Long Recovery Road: Keeping a Clean, Diverse Gene Pool Takes Much Effort - and More Time
The Associated Press (Posted by Billigs Gazette)
24 Dec 2006
Spreading and conserving the gene pool of Yellowstone National Park bison takes a considerable amount of steel and sweat. And it takes a big span of technology - everything from smashed pop cans on a wire (a loud rattle that gets the bison moving) to a polymerase chain reaction analyzer to record their DNA. The DNA test requires taking a couple ounces of blood, and bison don't give it up willingly.
Gathering the fluid means running the animals through a system of corrals and alleys and into a steel squeeze chute, then immobilizing their heads with rope and brawn. Understandably, the bison resist. The females are particularly fractious. They buck and kick, making all kinds of racket. Their eyes bulge and roll.When they finally submit, their breath sounds like the bellows on a forge, deep and double-barreled, through nostrils the size of a coffee cup.
Scientists Find Way to Remove Prion Infectivity From Animal Blood
HealthDay News (Posted by Statesman.com)
22 Dec 2006
A method of removing prion infectivity from scrapie-infected animal blood proved effective in tests on hamsters, says a U.S. study. The research, published in this week's issue of The Lancet, may help in the development of a way to prevent the spread of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human form of mad cow disease. Sheep scrapie is a fatal neurodegenerative prion disease -- like bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cows and vCJD in humans -- that occurs after years of incubation and no apparent symptoms.
In the case of vCJD, being able to remove prion infectivity from donated blood may be one way to reduce transmission of the disease. Researchers identified a molecule called L13 that selectively binds to the prion protein. They passed scrapie-infected hamster blood through devices that contained the L13 molecule and then injected the blood into 96 hamsters. None of them became infected, the study said.
New Disease Impacts Muskies to Minnows
SouthBendTribune.com
24 Dec 2006
L Stout
A new disease discovered in Michigan's Lake St. Clair muskies has left some area baitshops wondering whether they will have emerald shiner minnows for ice fishermen this winter. So, what's the connection? When muskies began dying last spring, fish scientists took samples and discovered yellow perch and gizzard shad were dying as well. Shortly thereafter, freshwater drum began dying in Lake Erie, round gobies in Lake Ontario and muskies in the St. Lawrence river.
The cause? VHS (viral hemorrhagic septicemia), a disease that has caused deaths of rainbow trout and other species in Europe and U.S. Pacific Coastal waters. The disease prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to impose a federal order last fall. It prohibited importation of certain species of fish from two Canadian Provinces into the U.S. and interstate movement of the same species from eight states bordering the Great Lakes.
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