Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Clam Cancer

According to the article Clam Caner Rips Along Atlantic Coast a fatal leukemia that is massacring soft-shell clam populations in the Atlantic may be caused by a contagious cancer cell line, according to results published on April 9th in Cell. Stephen Goff of Columbia University in NY compared leukemic and healthy hemocytes, finding that clam cancer cells isolate from various locations along the East Coast shared mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and other genetic features indicating a common origin.
Clams with this cancer show an over growth of abnormally shaped hemocytes, which convert clear circulatory fluid (healthy) to a milky white color (not healthy). infected species die within weeks or months; neoplasia is one of several factors that can wipe out entire beds of clams.
Last year, Goff and his colleagues identified a retrotransposon, called Steamer, which correlated with the disease. Normal Hemocytes contain 2-10 copies of this sequence, but cancerous carried 150-300 copies.
Researchers also found a common single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) in the mtDNA of leukemic cells that were not detected in healthy clam genomes. This was proven true by microsatellites of leukemic cells were identical across samples from all the geographic locations tested. This suggests that this form of clam leukemia may have originated from a single cancer cell, and then spread throughout populations along the coast.
Goff suggested that environmental contaminants or infectious agents may trigger the cancer. Boettger added that further work is needed to confirm whether these cancer cells are truly transmissible among clams. Because clams remain sessile throughout their adult lives, suggesting that the cancer has an unusual way of transmitting.
I found this article to be very interesting, but it left me with more questions than answers. For instance, would we be able to obtain this form of cancer if we eat a cancerous clam? Have other animals been infected? It stayed vague is many sections with no clear answer 



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