Centuries of genome instability and evolution in soft-shell clam, Mya arenaria, bivalve transmissible neoplasia.

ABSTRACT: Transmissible cancers are infectious parasitic clones that metastasize to new hosts, living past the death of the founder animal in which the cancer initiated. We investigated the evolutionary history of a cancer lineage that has spread though the soft-shell clam (Mya arenaria) population by assembling a chromosome-scale soft-shell clam reference genome and characterizing somatic mutations in transmissible cancer. We observe high mutation density, widespread copy-number gain, structural rearrangement, loss of heterozygosity, variable telomere lengths, mitochondrial genome expansion and transposable element activity, all indicative of an unstable cancer genome. We also discover a previously unreported mutational signature associated with overexpression of an error-prone polymerase and use t

SUBMITTER: Hart SFM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10663159 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature