Biotechnologies from Marine Bivalves

Bivalve molluscs comprise more than 9000 extant species. A number of them are traditionally farmed worldwide and are fundamental in the functioning of benthic cosystems. The peculiarities of marine bivalves have inspired versatile biotechnological tools for coastal pollution monitoring and several new biomimetic materials. oreover, large amounts of sequence data available for some farmed bivalve species can be used to unveil the organism’s responses to environmental factors (e.g. global limate change, emergence of new infectious agents and other production problems). In bivalves, transcriptomic and genomic resources increase more quickly than other mics data, and permit new bioinformatics inferences, real comparative genomics and the study of molecules suitable for biotechnological innovations. Bivalves (and their icroorganism communities) produce a variety of bioactive peptides, proteins and metabolites. Among them, the numerous families of antimicrobial peptides identified in the editerranean mussel likely contribute to its vigour and could assist with the identi#cation of molecular scaffolds for innovative pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals and onstructs uitable for other applications.