TY - JOUR
T1 - The effect of carotenoid supplementation on immune system development in juvenile male veiled chameleons (Chamaeleo calyptratus)
AU - McCartney, Kristen L.
AU - Ligon, Russell A.
AU - Butler, Michael W.
AU - Denardo, Dale
AU - McGraw, Kevin
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was approved by the Arizona State University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (protocol #10-1124R). We thank Brad Ross and Lynn Botschin for collecting and providing arthropods for our study, as well as Susannah French for guidance with wound-healing methodology. We thank Sarah Bruemmer and Megan Best for help with chameleon husbandry and carotenoid supplementation. We thank the members of the McGraw lab for providing helpful comments on a previous draft of this manuscript. We thank David and Sandy Ligon, Barrett Honors College, and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Arizona State University for their financial support of this work. MWB was partially supported by the Arizona State University Graduate College Dissertation Fellowship during this study.
PY - 2014/3/22
Y1 - 2014/3/22
N2 - Introduction: Nutrient availability, assimilation, and allocation can have important and lasting effects on the immune system development of growing animals. Though carotenoid pigments have immunostimulatory properties in many animals, relatively little is known regarding how they influence the immune system during development. Moreover, studies linking carotenoids to health at any life stage have largely been restricted to birds and mammals. We investigated the effects of carotenoid supplementation on multiple aspects of immunity in juvenile veiled chameleons (Chamaeleo calyptratus). We supplemented half of the chameleons with lutein (a xanthophyll carotenoid) for 14 weeks during development and serially measured multiple aspects of immune function, including: agglutination and lysis performance of plasma, wound healing, and plasma nitric oxide concentrations before and after wounding.Results: Though lutein supplementation effectively elevated circulating carotenoid concentrations throughout the developmental period, we found no evidence that carotenoid repletion enhanced immune function at any point. However, agglutination and lysis scores increased, while baseline nitric oxide levels decreased, as chameleons aged.Conclusions: Taken together, our results indicate that body mass and age, but not carotenoid access, may play an important role in immune performance of growing chameleons. Hence, studying well-understood physiological processes in novel taxa can provide new perspectives on alternative physiological processes and nutrient function.
AB - Introduction: Nutrient availability, assimilation, and allocation can have important and lasting effects on the immune system development of growing animals. Though carotenoid pigments have immunostimulatory properties in many animals, relatively little is known regarding how they influence the immune system during development. Moreover, studies linking carotenoids to health at any life stage have largely been restricted to birds and mammals. We investigated the effects of carotenoid supplementation on multiple aspects of immunity in juvenile veiled chameleons (Chamaeleo calyptratus). We supplemented half of the chameleons with lutein (a xanthophyll carotenoid) for 14 weeks during development and serially measured multiple aspects of immune function, including: agglutination and lysis performance of plasma, wound healing, and plasma nitric oxide concentrations before and after wounding.Results: Though lutein supplementation effectively elevated circulating carotenoid concentrations throughout the developmental period, we found no evidence that carotenoid repletion enhanced immune function at any point. However, agglutination and lysis scores increased, while baseline nitric oxide levels decreased, as chameleons aged.Conclusions: Taken together, our results indicate that body mass and age, but not carotenoid access, may play an important role in immune performance of growing chameleons. Hence, studying well-understood physiological processes in novel taxa can provide new perspectives on alternative physiological processes and nutrient function.
KW - Antioxidant
KW - Innate immunity
KW - Nitric oxide
KW - Reptiles
KW - Wound healing
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U2 - 10.1186/1742-9994-11-26
DO - 10.1186/1742-9994-11-26
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84899146044
SN - 1742-9994
VL - 11
JO - Frontiers in Zoology
JF - Frontiers in Zoology
IS - 1
M1 - 26
ER -