Frogs are good for our health – but they need our help to stay alive
Scientists are studying our rainforest frogs in North Queensland with the hope of finding answers to help all of Australia’s frogs while at the same time studying frogs and their habitat for possible cures to chronic illnesses in humans.
The following are only a few examples of research that is being carried out in relation to frogs.
Declining Frog Research at James Cook University, Queensland
There is a large project on declining frogs currently underway at James Cook University, conducted by Associate Professor Ross Alford and his current staff and students. This project is being funded by a collaborative research grant involving an international team and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and is entitled "Host-pathogen biology and the global decline of amphibians". It is being carried out in consultation with the North Queensland Frog Recovery Team and researchers from the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service.
Read more: http://www.jcu.edu.au/school/tbiol/zoology/herp/decline/alfo.shtml
Scientists join fight against frog diseases
3 July 2007
CSIRO is collaborating with other Australian research institutions, and conservation groups, to identify new and emerging diseases affecting frog populations in Far North Queensland.
CSIRO Livestock Industries’ Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, the Frog Decline Reversal Project, Inc’s (FDR project) Cairns Frog Hospital, Sydney’s Taronga Zoo and James Cook University (JCU), will combine their research expertise and technologies to diagnose new frog diseases detected recently by the FDR project.
Funded by the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Water Resources, the three-year Amphibian Disease Project was initiated by FDR Project founder, Deborah Pergolotti, based in Cairns, Far north queensland, Australia.
Read more: http://www.scienceimage.csiro.au/mediarelease/mr07-121.html.
Frog antibiotics
New research is showing that the rana esculenta, or edible frog, of Europe could lead to the discovery of new classes of antibiotics, which is an urgent need in the medical industry. The abstract of the report states that the rana esculenta possesses an “attractive molecule for use in the development of new compounds for the treatment of infectious diseases.” Why this is important:
Read more: http://aac.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/52/1/85
Frog research - more than skin deep
Tuesday, 16 December 2003
The University of Adelaide's Professor John Bowie was awarded the 2003 Sir Joseph Verco medal for his outstanding research investigating frog skin secretions.
Professor Bowie, from University's School of Chemistry and Physics, has been awarded the medal by the Royal Society of South Australia.
Professor Bowie and members of his research group, in collaboration with Associate Professor Michael Tyler from the University of Adelaide's Department of Environmental Biology and other researchers, have isolated and identified up to 200 biologically active compounds from frog skin secretions. Many of these display antibiotic and anticancer properties.
"Amphibians have rich chemical arsenals in their skin glands that form an integral part of their defense system," Professor Bowie says.
The chemical compounds secreted from special glands on the back of the frog are believed to protect the animal against disease in addition to warding off predators.
Glandular secretions are obtained by electrical stimulation of the skin, rather than sacrificing animals, and this process can be repeated on a monthly basis allowing sufficient material for chemical analysis.
Read more: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news635.html
Biodiversity loss threatens new treatments
British Medical Journal February 2008
Plants, animals, and microbes important to human health are being lost at an alarming rate, delegates heard when they attended a conference on the value of plants, animals, and microbes to human health held in New York last weekend. “The biological world is evaporating before we get a chance to thoroughly account for and understand it,” said Ellen Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which jointly sponsored the conference with Harvard Medical School, the United Nations Environment Programme, and the National Institutes of Health. Although 10-20 million species may exist on earth, a mere 1.7 million have been named, and half of all species will be driven to extinction by the middle of the 21st century .The natural kingdom is a source of new medicines, provides a model for drug design, and offers clues to human physiology. More than half of prescription and over the counter drugs originate as natural compounds or are based on them.
Poisonous cone snails and frog skin yield new, non-opioid painkillers hundreds of times more powerful than morphine. Ziconotide, a peptide from the venom of the cone snail, may offer relief from intractable chronic pain, said Dr George Miljanich of Neurex; clinical trials have been completed, and the drug will be submitted for approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Epibatidine, a synthetic compound based on an alkaloid found in the skin of frogs from the Brazilian rainforest, is now in early clinical trials.
Read more: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/reprint/316/7140/1261.pdf
Frog research could jump start livestock
CSIRO, 22 February 2006
Scientific efforts to reveal how an Australian frog maintains its muscle mass despite spending months or years hibernating underground could eventually lead to a dramatic reduction in the amount of feed livestock required in times of drought.
Common to Queensland’s dry interior, the green striped burrowing frog’s vital survival trait is the subject of a new joint research project involving CSIRO Livestock Industries’ scientists, Dr Nick Hudson and Dr Sigrid Lehnert, and a team of researchers from the University of Queensland led by zoologist Professor Craig Franklin.
After completing a PhD on the unique characteristics of the frog’s muscle metabolism two years ago, Dr Hudson continued researching its muscle physiology at CSIRO. He says that as the frog’s muscle structure is very similar to a range of animals, the research has the potential to bring significant benefits to the livestock industry.
‘The fact that frogs can make a super-fast recovery after hibernating through a drought – in extreme cases for years – has clear implications for animal husbandry,’ Dr Hudson says.
‘If farm animals were able to survive a drought with minimal feed input and then quickly gain condition when more feed was available, this would be extremely valuable.’
Recent findings suggest that high levels of antioxidants within the frog muscle inhibit the kind of muscle breakdown normally associated with long periods of inactivity. The new line of research will involve identifying key genes responsible for slowing muscle wastage in frogs and searching for related genes in livestock in a bid to optimise animal production.
Read more: http://www.csiro.au/news/ps19u.html
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