Department of Earth, Environment and Life Sciences (DISTAV), University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy.
Department of Biomolecular Sciences (DIBS), University of Urbino, Urbino, Italy.
Front Immunol. 2021 Feb 18;12:618726. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.618726. eCollection 2021.
The increasing number of data studies on the biological impact of anthropogenic chemicals in the marine environment, together with the great development of invertebrate immunology, has identified marine bivalves as a key invertebrate group for studies on immunological responses to pollutant exposure. Available data on the effects of contaminants on bivalve immunity, evaluated with different functional and molecular endpoints, underline that individual functional parameters (cellular or humoral) and the expression of selected immune-related genes can distinctly react to different chemicals depending on the conditions of exposure. Therefore, the measurement of a suite of immune biomarkers in hemocytes and hemolymph is needed for the correct evaluation of the overall impact of contaminant exposure on the organism's immunocompetence. Recent advances in -omics technologies are revealing the complexity of the molecular players in the immune response of different bivalve species. Although different -omics represent extremely powerful tools in understanding the impact of pollutants on a key physiological function such as immune defense, the -omics approach has only been utilized in this area of investigation in the last few years. In this work, available information obtained from the application of -omics to evaluate the effects of pollutants on bivalve immunity is summarized. The data shows that the overall knowledge on this subject is still quite limited and that to understand the environmental relevance of any change in immune homeostasis induced by exposure to contaminants, a combination of both functional assays and cutting-edge technology (transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) is required. In addition, the utilization of metagenomics may explain how the complex interplay between the immune system of bivalves and its associated bacterial communities can be modulated by pollutants, and how this may in turn affect homeostatic processes of the host, host-pathogen interactions, and the increased susceptibility to disease. Integrating different approaches will contribute to knowledge on the mechanism responsible for immune dysfunction induced by pollutants in ecologically and economically relevant bivalve species and further explain their sensitivity to multiple stressors, thus resulting in health or disease.
海洋环境中人为化学物质的生物学影响的研究数据不断增加，加上无脊椎动物免疫学的巨大发展，使海洋双壳类动物成为研究污染物暴露对免疫反应的关键无脊椎动物群体。可用的关于污染物对双壳类动物免疫影响的数据，用不同的功能和分子终点进行评估，强调个体功能参数（细胞或体液）和选定的免疫相关基因的表达可以根据暴露条件明显地对不同的化学物质作出反应。因此，需要测量血细胞和血淋巴中的一整套免疫生物标志物，以正确评估污染物暴露对生物体免疫能力的整体影响。组学技术的最新进展揭示了不同双壳类物种免疫反应中分子参与者的复杂性。尽管不同的组学在理解污染物对关键生理功能（如免疫防御）的影响方面是极其强大的工具，但在过去几年中，该组学方法才仅被应用于这一研究领域。在这项工作中，总结了应用组学评估污染物对双壳类动物免疫影响的可用信息。数据表明，关于这个主题的整体知识仍然相当有限，为了理解暴露于污染物引起的免疫稳态任何变化的环境相关性，需要将功能测定与前沿技术（转录组学、蛋白质组学和代谢组学）相结合。此外，宏基因组学的利用可以解释污染物如何调节双壳类动物的免疫系统与其相关细菌群落之间的复杂相互作用，以及这如何反过来影响宿主的动态平衡过程、宿主-病原体相互作用以及对疾病的易感性增加。整合不同的方法将有助于了解污染物在具有生态和经济重要性的双壳类物种中引起免疫功能障碍的机制，并进一步解释它们对多种胁迫的敏感性，从而导致健康或疾病。
