ArticleScientific reports2021
Traits of a mussel transmissible cancer are reminiscent of a parasitic life style.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Atlantic to Pacific: Outbreak of bivalve transmissible neoplasia detected in hybridizing soft-shell clams and eDNA in Puget Sound.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Variation in natural infection outcomes and cancer cell release from soft-shell clams (Mya arenaria) with bivalve transmissible neoplasia.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Article
- Gene expression in soft-shell clam (Mya arenaria) transmissible cancer reveals survival mechanisms during host infection and seawater transfer.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Ecology of vertical tumor transmission in the freshwater cnidarian Hydra oligactis.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Anthropogenic noise exposure suppresses the immune response inFrontiers in immunology · 2025Article
- Identification of an Outbreak of Bivalve Transmissible Neoplasia in Soft-Shell Clams (bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- De novo evolution of transmissible tumours in hydra.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- A chromosome-scale Mytilus edulis genome assembly for aquaculture, marine ecology, and evolution.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2024Article
- Identification and expression analysis of two steamer-like retrotransposons in the Chilean blue mussel (Mytilus chilensis).Biological research · 2024Article
- Marine transmissible cancer navigates urbanized waters, threatening spillover.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Centuries of genome instability and evolution in soft-shell clam, Mya arenaria, bivalve transmissible neoplasia.Nature cancer · 2023Article
- Transcriptomics of mussel transmissible cancer MtrBTN2 suggests accumulation of multiple cancer traits and oncogenic pathways shared among bilaterians.Open biology · 2023Article
- Two lineages of bivalve transmissible neoplasia affect the blue musselCurrent zoology · 2023Article
- Article
- Horizontal transmission of disseminated neoplasia in the widespread clam Macoma balthica from the Southern Baltic Sea.Molecular ecology · 2022Article
- Survival and Detection of Bivalve Transmissible Neoplasia from the Soft-Shell ClamPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Some cancers have evolved the ability to spread from host to host by transmission of cancerous cells. These rare biological entities can be considered parasites with a host-related genome. Still, we know little about their specific adaptation to a parasitic lifestyle. MtrBTN2 is one of the few lineages of transmissible cancers known in the animal kingdom. Reported worldwide, MtrBTN2 infects marine mussels. We isolated MtrBTN2 cells circulating in the hemolymph of cancerous mussels and investigated their phenotypic traits. We found that MtrBTN2 cells had remarkable survival capacities in seawater, much higher than normal hemocytes. With almost 100% cell survival over three days, they increase significantly their chances to infect neighboring hosts. MtrBTN2 also triggered an aggressive cancerous process: proliferation in mussels was ~ 17 times higher than normal hemocytes (mean doubling time of ~ 3 days), thereby favoring a rapid increase of intra-host population size. MtrBTN2 appears to induce host castration, thereby favoring resources re-allocation to the parasites and increasing the host carrying capacity. Altogether, our results highlight a series of traits of MtrBTN2 consistent with a marine parasitic lifestyle that may have contributed to the success of its persistence and dissemination in different mussel populations across the globe.
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