Harnessing innate immune training for enhanced disease resistance in marine bivalves
Marine bivalves are one of the most popular and iconic seafoods. They are found all over the world and marine bivalve aquaculture is an expanding industry globally. However, bivalve farming is constantly at risk because of its high dependency on environmental conditions and bivalves are particularly susceptible to environmental contaminants as they filter large volumes of seawater to feed and at the same time may concentrate pathogens and biotoxins (released by red algae blooms) that can cause disease and food-borne poisoning in humans.
Aims to extend understanding of bivalve immunity by a) identifying and comparing innate immunity and innate immune memory in the mantle and haemocytes, b) establish how immune training modifies the mantle and haemocyte response to infection, c) characterize the role of the mantle microbiome in immunity and how it changes with immune training.
Our bivalve model
We are studying the Mediterranean mussel (Mytillus galloprovinciallis), the second most economically valuable farmed bivalve species globally.
Jennifer Mc Shane
(Marine Biology Degree)
Drilling the shell
Sampling mussel tissues
Outreach activities in Local schools
Ciência Viva students 2024
Manuel and Gabriel (high school students) joined our team this summer within the Ciencia Viva 2024
Phagocytosis assay of mussel haemocytes
Image of the bacteria (green) and hemocytes (nucleus in blue). Several aggregates with fragments of bacteria inside are visible.
Check out here our video presentation
New student joined our project
Hanne Hoornaert from Belgium is doing her ERASMUS Traineeship for 3 month with us and is contributing to our project!
Project reference: 2022.08563.PTDC.
Funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) DOI:10.54499/2022.08563.PTDC