NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region

Tags: contaminants, beluga whale, ecotoxicology, cell biology

Objective(s): 1. To collect and cryopreserve living cells spanning the major physiological systems in beluga's at Hendrickson Island.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No. 5600. The objective of this project is: 1. To collect and cryopreserve living cells spanning the major physiological systems in beluga's at Hendrickson Island. Physiological systems will be target by harvesting cells from the following tissues: blood, liver, adrenals, thyroid, gonad, kidney, and spleen. The desired outcome is isolation and cryopreservation of cells in the field (into a nitrogen dryshipper) with high viability (all alive) that will be shipped back to my lab in Winnipeg where I can perform exposure studies with different contaminants to understand their biological effects on these physiological systems. The project can be divided into two parts. The first is field isolation of live cells, and the second is laboratory based exposure experiments. For the first part, the researcher will work closely with local hunters on Hendrickson Island and the research team from DFO on the beluga long term monitoring program to access beluga tissues soon after harvest. Tissue collection will potentially include blood, liver, adrenals, thyroid, gonad, kidney, and spleen in order to capture various physiological systems often targeted by environmental contaminants like PCBs, pesticides, mercury and other new emerging compounds. Tissue pieces will be processed on site in the field lab camps setup with DFO. Processing involves cutting tissue into small pieces, digestion of connective tissue, isolation and washing of single cell suspensions, and then cryopreservation in nitrogen dryshippers. Live cryopreserved cells will then be shipper back to my lab at the University of Winnipeg for the next part of the project. The second part of the project is focused on using live cells to characterize the toxicity of priority contaminants in the Arctic. Priority contaminants include those commonly detected in beluga and other Arctic marine mammals and indigenous populations, including legacy persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as PCBs, DDT, HCH, Chlordance and PBDEs as well as new and emerging POPs like perfluorinated compounds (PFOS, PFOS), brominated flame retardants, chlorinated parrafins, plasticizers, current use pesticides, among others. Cells will be cultured in my cell culture lab to perform dose-response exposure studies (increasing exposure doses) in order to establish toxicity threshold levels for each contaminant and cell line. Different cell lines and biological endpoints will be used to assess the mechanism of action of the different contaminants, for example if they affect immune cells they would be immunotoxic or if they affect gonad cells they would be reproductive toxicants. Biological endpoints will span acute toxicity (cell death) to subtle chronic health effects like functional responses and gene expression. The researcher has already been in contact with Tuktyoaktuk HTC to garner support for this project. The support letter is attached to this application. Results of the project will be communicated back to the Tuktyoaktuk HTC and broader community in tandem with the long-term beluga monitoring program. This will involve meeting with the Tuk HTC to report on results (in person and zoom) and producing plain language summaries for the beluga bulletin. I will also work with local indigenous youth that will travel to Winnipeg to see and train on lab protocols. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from: June 29 - December 31, 2023