Omics Insights into Animal Resilience and Stress Factors

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Resilience is the ability to adapt well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress. The concept of resilience has been applied to a wide range of systems ranging from cells to organisms. Environmental factors adaptively modulate resilience by intervening with transgenerationally transmitted epigenetic modifications. This review was organized to conceptualize the dynamic nature of molecular responses to stressors and the physiological role of resilience in maintaining or restoring normal homeostasis. ABSTRACT: Resilience is conceived as a dynamic developmental process involving the achievement of positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity. Resilience is not a unique ability but rather a set of capacities of a system put in place to absorb a disturbance and to reorganize while trying to retain the same function, structure, and identity. This review describes the characteristics and the molecular mechanisms of resilience to understand the core elements of resilience and its indicators. The objectives of this review are: (1) to define some of the leading environmental stressors and clarify the mechanism of vulnerability or resilience outcomes; (2) to clarify some of the prominent epigenetic modulations mediating resilience or vulnerability as a stress response; (3) to highlight the neural mechanisms related to stress resilience since the central nervous system is a highly dynamic structure characterized by an everlasting plasticity feature, which therefore has the opportunity to modify resilience. The review aims to introduce the reader to the concept of resilience seen as an ability acquired in life and not only inherited from birth.