Abolins Stephen R, Pocock Michael J O, Hafalla Julius C R, Riley Eleanor M, Viney Mark E
School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UG, UK.
Mol Ecol. 2011 Mar;20(5):881-92. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2010.04910.x. Epub 2010 Nov 12.
The immune function of wild animals has been rather little studied. Wild animals' immune function may differ from that of laboratory bred animals because of their different environments. This idea follows from the concept of resource partitioning in which animals distribute scarce resources to all aspects of life, including to costly immune responses. A logical extension of this idea is that there may be substantial interindividual variation in the immune function of wild animals. To begin to investigate this, we compared the immune function of a laboratory bred mouse strain (C57BL/6, a widely used mouse strain that makes potent immune responses) and wild caught Mus musculus. We found that by most measures of immune function, the wild caught mice had greater immune function. Specifically, wild mice had greater concentrations and more avid antigen-specific IgG responses, as well as higher concentrations of total IgG and IgE, compared with those laboratory bred mice. Moreover, flow cytometric analysis showed a comparatively greater overall level of activation of the cells of the immune system in wild mice. Lastly, we observed that immune function was substantially more variable among wild caught mice than among the laboratory bred mice. The next research challenge is to understand which aspects of an individual animal's life determine its immune function.
野生动物的免疫功能研究得相当少。由于环境不同，野生动物的免疫功能可能与实验室培育的动物有所不同。这一观点源于资源分配的概念，即动物将稀缺资源分配到生活的各个方面，包括代价高昂的免疫反应。这个观点的一个合理延伸是，野生动物的免疫功能可能存在很大的个体差异。为了开始研究这一点，我们比较了实验室培育的小鼠品系（C57BL/6，一种广泛使用且能产生强烈免疫反应的小鼠品系）和野生捕获的小家鼠的免疫功能。我们发现，从大多数免疫功能指标来看，野生捕获的小鼠具有更强的免疫功能。具体而言，与那些实验室培育的小鼠相比，野生小鼠具有更高的浓度和更强烈的抗原特异性IgG反应，以及更高的总IgG和IgE浓度。此外，流式细胞术分析显示野生小鼠免疫系统细胞的总体激活水平相对更高。最后，我们观察到野生捕获的小鼠之间的免疫功能差异比实验室培育的小鼠之间大得多。下一个研究挑战是了解单个动物生活的哪些方面决定其免疫功能。
