Scientists create gene-edited 'Peter Pan' toad capable of halting its own growth: 'The toad tadpoles absolutely eradicate them all'

An invasive toad species has been wreaking havoc in the waters of northern Australia, but scientists may have found a solution for curbing its growth.

A group of researchers from Macquarie University has successfully gene-edited a cane toad egg by removing one gene to prevent it from generating hormones required to reach adulthood, according to a report from ABC News in Australia.

The hatchlings instead stay in the tadpole stage for months longer than usual, during which cane toads practice cannibalism and feed on their own kind. If this gene editing can be scaled up, releasing these "Peter Pan toads" that never grow up could be an effective strategy for controlling the wild cane toad population.

In testing, the gene-edited tadpoles have eaten three times as many toad eggs as regular tadpoles.

"In some of our field trials if there's older tadpoles in the pond you get no survival of eggs," said Rick Shine, an evolutionary biologist and ecologist at Macquarie University, per ABC News. "The toad tadpoles absolutely eradicate them all and they're not all that interested in frog eggs."

There are more than 200 million cane toads in Australia, and they have been very harmful to local marsupials and reptiles. Cane toads are native to South America, but they were released in Queensland in 1935 as a biocontrol solution for cane beetles, according to ABC News.

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The scientists are still working on solutions for scaling this new method effectively. Because the gene-edited tadpoles don't reach adulthood, they can't reproduce and spread.

Instead of manually creating thousands of gene-edited eggs, the researchers are considering releasing the missing hormone into the water where cane toads live. This would allow some of the gene-edited tadpoles to grow into adults and produce more tadpoles.

For now, the team behind this research is working with the local government to conduct field trials in western and northern Australia to further test the viability of this population control strategy.

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