Dr. Emily Latch has received a new Federal Grant from the Multistate Conservation Grants Program for $199,061 to continue her work to develop and apply genomic tools to inform management of chronic wasting disease (CWD). This adds to her funding of over half a million dollars. In this new work, Dr. Latch and her team will be applying the tools they have been developing to genotype deer from 17 partner states across the eastern US where white-tailed deer are susceptible to CWD.
CWD is an emerging infectious disease that is fatal to wild and captive cervids (e.g., deer, elk, caribou, moose). A contagious neurological prion disease, CWD is the only transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE; others include “mad cow” disease, scrapie in sheep, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans) known to affect free-ranging wildlife.
Great work, Dr. Latch!