Health and Hypoxia: A Deep Dive into Marine Mammal Genetics

Project Team

Hypoxia occurs when tissues are deprived of an adequate oxygen supply and is a critically important concern in human clinical settings, including heart attack, stroke, surgery and cancer. In the animal kingdom, deep-diving whales appear to have adapted an exquisite tolerance for hypoxia, demonstrated by their ability to dive at depth, often for hours, while foraging. Marine mammals may hold the answer to developing new ways to protect hypoxia-sensitive species and create new clinical interventions for hypoxia as it relates to human health.

This team used genetics to identify cellular adaptations of deep-diving marine mammals and uncover candidate genes that help them cope with low oxygen conditions (i.e. hypoxia). They found heightened mitochondria levels in deep-diving marine mammals and identified differentiation in genes associated with tumor regulation, inflammation and immune response between deep and shallow-diving marine mammals.


Team profile by Magdalena Phillips

Illustration of dolphins.
illustration by Claire Huang (MEM ’22)

Our team strove to understand how marine mammals tolerate hypoxia, or the lack of oxygen, by studying their molecular and genetic adaptations. We used several different methods to research that broad question, including dolphin population genetics, heart organoid creation, RNA sequencing, and coexpression analysis. We hope to eventually apply our findings to a clinical setting for human health research.

We have created a website that summarizes the work we completed during the 2021-2022 academic year. The link leads to our home page with a video that introduces our project and its goals. You can then click on “The Team” to learn more about each of our team members or the “Research” tab to read about the progress of each of our subteams. Lastly, the “Learn!” tab contains a variety of science communication pieces, including short videos and blogs that go in-depth into each team member’s research. (For the best experience, we recommend viewing the website on desktop.)

Learning from Whales: A Deep Dive in Marine Mammal Genetics

Poster by Claire Huang, Katherine Krieger, Natalie Kubicki, Eva Ma, Magdalena Phillips, Sam Schulteis, Yumi Tsuyuki, Giselle Wang, Annie Zhang, Ashley Blawas, Nicola Quick, Tom Schultz, Jason Somarelli and Jillian Wisse

Project poster.