Scientists Discovered Genetic Factors in Frogs that Make it Immune to the Fungal Disease

Scientists discovered genetic factors that make frog immune to the fungal disease chytridiomycosis. This could improve captive breeding schemes. Chytridiomycosis is slowly spreading across the world and has already sent a number of species extinct. Chytridiomycosis kills by damaging the skin of the living being, which eventually results into cardiac arrest.

Frogs and other amphibians that had no resistance succumbed quickly. For their experiment, Scientists collected lowland leopard frogs (Lithobates yavapaiensis) from five places in Arizona.

In the lab, they infected the animals with the chytrid fungus (Batratochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd). All the frogs collected from three of the locations died. However, the frogs from the other two locations survived and fought off the infection completely.

The researchers traced the difference back to regions of DNA that form part of the immune system called the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC).

It is likely that the two populations whose members survived infection in the lab are the ones that had been most strongly exposed to the fungus in the wild since it was detected in Arizona in the 1970s.