A Functional Genomics Approach to Understanding and Evaluating Health in Navy Dolphins
Abstract
The U.S. Navy maintains and deploys approximately 70 bottlenose dolphins for military operations and research. Health maintenance of these animals is critical to the success of the Navy's mission. Functional genomic approaches offer the potential to complement traditional methods of health assessment with rapid, sensitive and highly discriminative tests for health, infection, and exposure to chemical, biological and physical stress. To this end we have initialized development of a dolphin gene microarray in order to evaluate its utility as a transcriptomic biosensor in the health assessment of dolphins. To this end, normalized dolphin cDNA libraries have been generated from stimulated and unstimulated dolphin peripheral blood leukocytes. Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) have been collected and sequenced. Target genes (both immune response and stress-related) have been amplified and segments cloned for subsequent microarray development as well as for cloning of the full-length genes. The immunoglobulin genes were further studied and characterized at the molecular level. These valuable molecular tools will not only help in characterization of the dolphin immune system, but will be utilized in the development of a dolphin gene microarray to use as a transcriptomic biosensor in the health assessment of Navy and wild dolphins.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA425901
Entities
People
- Gregory Warr
- Tracy A. Romano
Organizations
- Medical University of South Carolina