TY - JOUR
T1 - Whales Use Distinct Strategies to Counteract Solar Ultraviolet Radiation
AU - Martinez-Levasseur, Laura M.
AU - Birch-Machin, Mark A.
AU - Bowman, Amy
AU - Gendron, Diane
AU - Weatherhead, Elizabeth
AU - Knell, Robert J.
AU - Acevedo-Whitehouse, Karina
N1 - Funding Information:
Supplementary information accompanies this paper at http://www.nature.com/ scientificreports Competing financial interests: L.M.M.L was funded by a NERC PhD Studentship (NE/ F00818X/1) awarded at Queen Mary University of London. Fieldwork was partially funded by the IPN (Instituto Politécnico National de Mexico to which CICIMAR is affiliated) and CONACYT (CB-2006-61982). MtDNA work was conducted in and financed by the Institute of Cellular Medicine of Newcastle University, and the UK NIHR Biomedical Research Centre in Ageing and Age-related Disease to the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This study is registered as project WLE/0474 at the Institute of Zoology. Samples were collected under permits SGPA/ DGVS/00506/08, SGPA/DGVS/09760/08 and SGPA/DGVS/08021/06 issued by SEMARNAT.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - A current threat to the marine ecosystem is the high level of solar ultraviolet radiation (UV). Large whales have recently been shown to suffer sun-induced skin damage from continuous UV exposure. Genotoxic consequences of such exposure remain unknown for these long-lived marine species, as does their capacity to counteract UV-induced insults. We show that UV exposure induces mitochondrial DNA damage in the skin of seasonally sympatric fin, sperm, and blue whales and that this damage accumulates with age. However, counteractive molecular mechanisms are markedly different between species. For example, sperm whales, a species that remains for long periods at the sea surface, activate genotoxic stress pathways in response to UV exposure whereas the paler blue whale relies on increased pigmentation as the season progresses. Our study also shows that whales can modulate their responses to fluctuating levels of UV, and that different evolutionary constraints may have shaped their response strategies.
AB - A current threat to the marine ecosystem is the high level of solar ultraviolet radiation (UV). Large whales have recently been shown to suffer sun-induced skin damage from continuous UV exposure. Genotoxic consequences of such exposure remain unknown for these long-lived marine species, as does their capacity to counteract UV-induced insults. We show that UV exposure induces mitochondrial DNA damage in the skin of seasonally sympatric fin, sperm, and blue whales and that this damage accumulates with age. However, counteractive molecular mechanisms are markedly different between species. For example, sperm whales, a species that remains for long periods at the sea surface, activate genotoxic stress pathways in response to UV exposure whereas the paler blue whale relies on increased pigmentation as the season progresses. Our study also shows that whales can modulate their responses to fluctuating levels of UV, and that different evolutionary constraints may have shaped their response strategies.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84884149150&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/srep02386
DO - 10.1038/srep02386
M3 - Artículo
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 3
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
M1 - 2386
ER -