You want to acquire Tylotritons to purposefully infect them with Bsal? You want to do it so badly you're considering relocating to another country?
Who do you work for?
Oh deary me....you got me in the gut on that one. In all seriousness though, I am actually a scientist and have a MSc in agricultural biotechnology, and soon a PhD in biochemistry/structural biology. I've just had an addiction to amphibians since I was young, and thought that I could perhaps merge my career with a really urgent and difficult problem facing them these days.
For proof, and at the risk of revealing my identity. Here is the patent:
US Patent Application for POLYNUCLEOTIDE COMPLEXES HAVING IMPROVED DELIVERY INTO CELLS Patent Application (Application #20200299688 issued September 24, 2020) - Justia Patents Search
And the related paper:
Tetrabutylphosphonium Bromide Reduces Size and Polydispersity Index of Tat2:siRNA Nano-Complexes for Triticale RNAi
Frontiers is sort of a naughty word to some scientists, but I think the article is sound (well it's my work, so I need to stand by it). I did that work in triticale, but I have good reason (somewhat confidential until followed up) to believe it could also be used on Batrachochytrium fungi. The primary hitch is that the adjuvant chemical, TBPB, is highly toxic to aquatic life, so some fiddling would be necessary. I think a sulfonium salt might work as I found that some aggregation prone proteins seem to stabilize in the presence of trimethyl-sulfonium iodide, still not sure on how much of an envirotoxin it would be though. The idea would be to use representatives of the major genera in Asia and Europe as models. I think a foundational study could use 1-2 species from each continent, with 5 biological replicates for each treatment, so I'd need substantive numbers, as I'd need to test a number of different conditions and do optimizations and find a way to measure fungal load that doesn't use PCR, as PCR can give substantive experimental artefacts, and is really best just to measure presence of an organism in a tissue swab or isolate. My thinking is to measure by HPLC some unique mycotoxin produced by the Bsal from normalized skin samples taken from infected salamanders. Early days yet, and I've got a lot to chew on over the next couple years. Of course, I think the first thing to publish is a proof of concept with dish cultured fungi, before we go straight into animal testing (ethics reviewers can take their sweet time). Although, I didn't have to get any permission when I did work in beetles.
Although, yes I'd love to have a tylototriton shanjing in my collection, just because they are cool.