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 ecosystems. The peculiarities of marine bivalves have inspired versatile biotechnological tools for coastal pollution monitoring and several new biomimetic materials. Moreover, 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 climate change, emergence of new infectious agents and other production problems). In bivalves, transcriptomic and genomic resources increase more quickly than other omics data, and permit new bioinformatics inferences, real comparative genomics and the study of molecules suitable for biotechnological innovations. Bivalves (and their microorganism communities) produce a variety of bioactive peptides, proteins and metabolites. Among them, the numerous families of antimicrobial peptides identified in the Mediterranean mussel likely contribute to its vigour and could assist with the identification of molecular scaffolds for innovative pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals and constructs suitable for other applications.