‘Only hope we’ve got’: the audacious plan to genetically engineer Australia’s endangered northern quoll

In a revolutionary approach, scientists are hoping that modifying the marsupial's genes to resist cane toads' toxin will save it from extinction

In a laboratory in the University of Melbourne earlier this year, PhD student Pierre Ibri was running an experiment that could prove to be a critical step in an audacious plan to save Australia's endangered northern quoll.

In plastic trays were groups of tissue cells of another Australian marsupial - the common and mouse-like fat-tailed dunnart - that he was subjecting to the toxin of the cane toad, an invasive amphibian that has cut a swathe through populations of native animals in Australia's north.