Bivalve omics: state of the art and potential applications for the biomonitoring of harmful marine compounds.

The extraordinary progress in sequencing technologies and bioinformatics has made the development of omic studies virtually ubiquitous in all fields of life sciences. Scientific attention is unevenly distributed in the different branches of the tree of life, leaving molluscs, one of the most diverse animal groups, relatively unexplored. Bivalve molluscs play a fundamental role in the functioning of coastal marine ecosystems, are valuable resources in the aquaculture sector, 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 target 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 characterization studies and functional data analysis in bivalve molluscs, providing an overview on the available data resources and applications for the biomonitoring of harmful marine compounds.