Bivalve Omics: State of the Art and Potential Applications for the Biomonitoring of Harmful Marine Compounds

Marine Drugs

Victoria Suárez-Ulloa²  Juan Fernández-Tajes³  Chiara Manfrin⁴  Marco Gerdol⁴  Paola Venier¹ 

[1]Department of Biology, University of Padova, Padova 35121, Italy

[2] E-Mail:

[3]Chromatin Structure and Evolution (CHROMEVOL) Group, Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, North Miami, FL 33181, USA

[4] E-Mail:

[5]Wellcome Trust Center for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7BN, UK

[6] E-Mail:

[7]Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste 34127, Italy

[8] E-Mails:

关键词: marine invertebrates;    omics;    bioinformatics;    pollution;    biomonitoring;    biotoxins;    heavy metals;    PAHs;   

DOI  :  10.3390/md11114370

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The extraordinary progress experienced by sequencing technologies and bioinformatics has made the development of omic studies virtually ubiquitous in all fields of life sciences nowadays. However, scientific attention has been quite unevenly distributed throughout the different branches of the tree of life, leaving molluscs, one of the most diverse animal groups, relatively unexplored and without representation within the narrow collection of well established model organisms. Within this Phylum, bivalve molluscs play a fundamental role in the functioning of the marine ecosystem, constitute very valuable commercial resources in aquaculture, and have been widely used as sentinel organisms in the biomonitoring of marine pollution. Yet, it has only been very recently that this complex group of organisms became a preferential subject for omic studies, posing new challenges for their integrative characterization. The present contribution aims to give a detailed insight into the state of the art of the omic studies and functional information analysis of bivalve molluscs, providing a timely perspective on the available data resources and on the current and prospective applications for the biomonitoring of harmful marine compounds.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.