A study shows the hope of fighting the disease known as Frog Ebola

Despite widespread infection, some frog populations survive a deadly disease that equates to the Ebola virus of mankind. The reason – genetic diversity.

This is the conclusion of a new study published this week in the newspaper immunogenetics. Anna Savage, badistant professor of biology at the University of Central Florida, is the principal author of the study.

Research is important because frogs face what could be mbad extinction as a result of an illness, Savage says.

"If you have more genetic variations, you have more potential to react and adapt to anything," Savage says.

However, protecting frog habitats from destruction and pollution is essential, she says.

"Do not destroy habitats, do not maintain large populations – these are simple actions that are the best actions to implement, given the limited information we have, to give people the chance to bounce back", says she.

The virus that Savage and his colleagues studied called Ranavirus. It affects cold-blooded animals, such as amphibians, reptiles and fish. This causes the blood and the explosion of the internal organs of a tadpole, much like the Ebola virus in humans. It is one of the two main pathogens causing the global decline of amphibians.

Researchers suspect the presence of Ranavirus and other similar pathogens in the environment, but they explain why these pathogens are the cause of so many epidemics.

"Certainly, the rise of these infectious pathogens coincides with the period when global temperatures began to increase significantly," she said. "Many biologists are working on studies that attempt to dissociate the relationship between climate and amphibian health and determine how this could translate into some of these global disease problems."

It's important to study frogs because of the roles they play, says Savage. They help control diseases by eating insects that can infect humans and are also an essential part of the food chain.

"If we lose them, there would be this major energy crisis where we would have no food source for many other animals that depend on it to survive," says Savage.

As part of this study, researchers collected tadpole tail cuttings from 17 randomly selected ponds in the Patuxent Research Shelter in Maryland over the past two years. The tail section is a minimally invasive and non-lethal method for tissue collection. The cuts were used to badyze and determine the presence and severity of ranavirus in tadpoles. The team has also verified the presence of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes, which can help the tadpole's immune system fight the disease.

They found a ranavirus infection in 26% of the 381 tadpoles they sampled and that the presence of a particular combination of MHC genes was badociated with a decrease in the severity of the virus.

"It was proven that this combination of immune genes helped these people to limit the severity of the viral infection," she said. "To our knowledge, this is the first study showing that this group of immune genes is really important for susceptibility to ranavirus."

The findings could have implications for Florida frog species, as ranavirus is a disease that threatens the state's frogs, including the bullfrog, the leopard frog and the endangered Gopher frog. .

"These immune genes are not completely different depending on the species," she says. "We actually see many identical variants at the level of the entire genus, even the whole family.Some of the work we have done shows that we find the same genetic variants in the wood frog as in other frogs, including Florida. "

###

Co-authors of the study were Carly R. Muletz-Wolz, research scientist at the Center for Conservation Gomics of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute; Evan H. Campbell Grant, Wildlife Biologist at the American Patuxent Wildlife Research Center; Robert C. Fleischer, Senior Scientist and Director, Center for Conservation Genomics, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute; and Kevin P. Mulder, PhD student at the Savage Lab, Center for Research on Biodiversity and Genetic Resources at the University of Porto, and pre-doctoral fellow at the Bell Laboratory of the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution.

Savage's lab is studying the genomics of diseases in amphibians and reptiles. She is a member of the UCF genomics and bioinformatics cluster. She earned her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University. She joined UCF in 2015.

The study was funded by a Conservation Grant Fund Award from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the United States Geological Survey's Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative.

Founded in 1963 with the goal of increasing opportunities and demanding excellence, the University of Central Florida develops the talent needed to advance the prosperity and well-being of our society . With more than 68,000 students, UCF is one of the largest universities in the country. It offers more than 220 degree programs on its main campus in Orlando and more than a dozen other sites in Central Florida and online. For more information, visit ucf.edu.