When humans experience liver failure, this can result in the accumulation of ammonia in the blood which can result in brain swelling. Gulf toadfish are very tolerant to high levels of ammonia and interestingly, do not experience brain swelling in response to high ammonia. Ongoing research in our lab using brain cell culture is working to understand the mechanisms that toadfish have to prevent brain swelling as we believe that the Gulf toadfish may make an excellent non-mammalian model to study this human health issue.
