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Parwinder Kaur, Associate Professor | Director, DNA Zoo Australia, The University of Western Australia

Australia's iconic black swans have a worrying immune system deficiency, new genome study finds

Conor O'Reagan/Unsplash

For years, scientists have known bird flu kills every black swan it infects. This means if the disease made it to the Australian continent, it would be an existential threat to this iconic Aussie species.

A new study published today in Genome Biology finally reveals the gene contributions that make black swans particularly prone to falling victim to infectious diseases.

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