NEWSLETTER

The Australian Effort to Eradicate Cane Toads

Cell Crunch (Issue 2021.01.15)

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CRISPR & Cane Toads Take Center Stage in New Yorker Article

In the January 18 issue of The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘The Sixth Extinction’) discusses how CRISPR and gene drives can be used to eradicate invasive species, or bring species back from extinction (CRISPR and the Splice to Survive). The highlight of the story, at least for me, was its discussion of an ongoing Australian effort to mitigate the looming threats caused by an invasive amphibian.

Towards the start of the article, Kolbert recounts a trip to the BSL-4 Australian Animal Health Laboratory, outside Melbourne. Inside, Mark Tizard and Caitlin Cooper are devising new strategies to rid Australia of Rhinella marina, or cane toads.

Cane toads arrived in Australia from Hawai’i in 1935, and have a splotchy brown color. Some, writes Kolbert, resemble a boulder; the largest cane toad spotted on the continent “was fifteen inches long and weighed six pounds.” Though they spend much of…