Male long-nosed seahorse (Hippocampus guttulatus),STEVE TREWHELLA/Nature Photographers Ltd/Alamy.Missing or dysfunctional part of vertebrate immune system may explain why that is male seahorses and pipefishes can carry a pregnancy – and possibly inspire new treatments for diseases related to immunity in humans and other animals.
Seahorses and some of their delicate cousins, the pipefish, thrive in an “ocean of microbes.” Olivia Roth at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Studies in Kiel, Germany. However, they do so despite the inactivity or complete absence of long-existing major histocompatibility complex II (MHC-2) genes.
