Only 15 years ago, the future of the best known carnivorous marsupial looked secure. Tasmanian devils then numbered 100,000 and had a large island to call home, so the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classed them as being of 鈥淟east Concern鈥�.
In fact the devils were sitting on a genetic time bomb, and in 1996 it went off, in the form of a deadly infectious cancer that has pushed them to the brink of extinction. They cannot fight it, because genetically speaking all the individuals are almost identical (see 鈥�Tasmanian devils were sitting ducks for deadly cancer鈥�).
The IUCN had no idea, since it did not demand the sort of genetic testing that would have revealed how vulnerable the devils were. It still doesn鈥檛.
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There were good reasons for that back in the 1990s. Genome sequencing was slow, difficult and expensive, and even when the data was in no one knew what it meant.
But times have changed. The cost of genotyping is falling, and we now have a better idea of how genes work. Genotyping thousands of species will still be expensive, but it could help to prevent another tragedy like the one unfolding in Tasmania.