Marine Mammal Immunity Toward Environmental Challenges

Human activities influence contaminant concentrations in aquatic organisms. It is increasingly common to monitor the marine environment and establish geographic trends of pollution by measuring contaminant levels in animals from higher trophic levels. Marine mammals are considered an ideal model for the assessment of immunological responses to pathogens and contaminants. In fact, living their entire life (or most of it) in the sea, they act as integrators of the stressors present in the marine environment. Marine mammals may have the potential to predict contaminant effects on health, and to be indicators of the status of the marine ecosystem. The impact of infection and environmental stress is here described through the analysis of the immunological processes based on large scale genomic approaches, highly informative of the interaction of genetic, disease and environmental factors.

Human activities influence contaminant concentrations in aquatic organisms. It is increasingly common to monitor the marine environment and establish geographic trends of pollution by measuring contaminant levels in animals from higher trophic levels. Marine mammals are considered to be an ideal model for the assessment of immunological responses to pathogens and contaminants. In fact, living their entire lives (or most of it) in the sea, they act as integrators of the stressors present in the marine environment. Marine mammals may have the potential to predict contaminant effects on health and to be indicators of the status of the marine ecosystem. The impact of infection and environmental stress is here described through the analysis of the immunological processes based on large-scale genomic approaches, highly informative of the interaction of genetic, disease, and environmental factors.