Understanding how the host immunity, the microbiome and environmental stressors shape the ecology and evolution of horizontal transmissible cancers in marine bivalves.

Objetivo

Horizontal transmissible cancers can be passed from one individual to another through malignant cancer cell lines. Such cancers induce leukemia-like cancer in marine bivalves, termed bivalve transmissible neoplasia (BTN). While most BTN lineages are confined to a single host species, some are able to infect multiple species, as demonstrated by my previous work. Host immunity is a known central gatekeeper against BTN, but additional factors have a role in cancer progression, including the host microbiome and the surrounding environment. The interplay of these three factors in driving BTN remains unexplored in the marine ecosystem.

I hypothesize that host immunity, the bivalve microbiome, and environmental stressors such as salinity and temperature together define the ecological niche that determines whether BTN cells can persist within common cockles and cross into closely related bivalve species. Through Bivalve2bivalve, I will employ integrative multi-omics approaches to disentangle how these three drivers shape the persistence and transmission potential of BTN. Specifically, this project will:
1) Test whether host immune responses restrict or permit BTN persistence, and identify the cellular and molecular pathways underlying this interaction.
2) Determine if variation in the cockle-associated microbiome influences susceptibility or resistance to BTN, and identify microbial taxa and functions linked to outcomes.
3) Evaluate how environmental stressors such as salinity and temperature interact with immunity and microbiome constituents to modulate BTN persistence and cross-species transmission.

Bivalve2bivalve will establish a conceptual framework for understanding transmissible cancers and deepen our knowledge of how hosts, their microbiomes, and the environment shape disease ecology.