Whales and polar bear in a petri dish: decoding marine mammal toxicology through in vitro and in silico approaches – Marma-detox

Large marine mammals, including polar bear and whales, fill important niches at high levels in marine and arctic food chains. Their high energy intake is often accompanied with elevated levels of contaminants having bioaccumulating and biomagnifying properties. Although receiving a lot of public attention, the massive hunting of large marine mammals over the last centuries turned these into threatened, rare, and, as a result, poorly studied animals. Further research investigating the consequences of contaminant exposure is needed and would help to better understand effects of contaminants on population dynamics and help bringing these large and important animals back in sustainable numbers. In this project, we are investigating how environmental contaminants affect marine mammals at the cellular and molecular levels, using advanced marine mammal cell culturing techniques and genome information from selected species of marine mammals such as polar bear, fin whales and killer whales.