Nouri-Shirazi Mahyar, Bible Brittany F, Zeng Menghua, Tamjidi Saba, Bossart Gregory D
Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, Integrated Medical Science Department, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, PO Box 3091, Boca Raton, FL, 33431, USA.
Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, People's Republic of China.
BMC Vet Res. 2017 Mar 27;13(1):78. doi: 10.1186/s12917-017-0998-3.
Studies suggest that free-ranging bottlenose dolphins exhibit a suppressed immune system because of exposure to contaminants or microorganisms. However, due to a lack of commercially available antibodies specific to marine mammal immune cell surface markers, the research has been indecisive. The purpose of this study was to identify cross-reactive terrestrial-specific antibodies in order to assess the changes in the immune cell populations of dolphins under human care and free-ranging dolphins. The blood and PBMC fraction of blood samples from human care and free-ranging dolphins were characterized by H&E staining of cytospin slides and flow cytometry using a panel of terrestrial-specific antibodies.
In this study, we show that out of 65 terrestrial-specific antibodies tested, 11 were cross-reactive and identified dolphin immune cell populations within their peripheral blood. Using these antibodies, we found significant differences in the absolute number of cells expressing specific markers within their lymphocyte and monocyte fractions. Interestingly, the peripheral blood mononuclear cell profile of free-ranging dolphins retained an additional population of cells that divided them into two groups showing a low (<27%) or high (>56%) percentage of smaller cells resembling granulocytes.
We found that the cross-reactive antibodies not only identified specific changes in the immune cells of free-ranging dolphins, but also opened the possibility to investigate the causal relationship between immunosuppression and mortality seen in free-ranging dolphins.
研究表明，由于接触污染物或微生物，野生宽吻海豚的免疫系统受到抑制。然而，由于缺乏针对海洋哺乳动物免疫细胞表面标志物的市售抗体，该研究一直没有定论。本研究的目的是鉴定交叉反应性陆生特异性抗体，以评估人工饲养海豚和野生海豚免疫细胞群体的变化。使用一组陆生特异性抗体，通过细胞涂片的苏木精-伊红（H&E）染色和流式细胞术对人工饲养海豚和野生海豚的血液及血液样本中的外周血单核细胞（PBMC）部分进行表征。
在本研究中，我们发现，在所测试的65种陆生特异性抗体中，有11种具有交叉反应性，并能识别海豚外周血中的免疫细胞群体。使用这些抗体，我们发现其淋巴细胞和单核细胞部分中表达特定标志物的细胞绝对数量存在显著差异。有趣的是，野生海豚的外周血单核细胞谱中保留了另外一群细胞，这些细胞将它们分为两组，显示出类似于粒细胞的较小细胞的低比例（<27%）或高比例（>56%）。
我们发现，交叉反应性抗体不仅能识别野生海豚免疫细胞中的特定变化，还为研究野生海豚免疫抑制与死亡率之间的因果关系提供了可能性。
