Gastropoda comprises the largest class of invertebrates in the phylum Mollusca. These diverse snails and slugs are found in a wide variety of habitats from marine to freshwater environments in tropical and temperate regions of the world. Despite their massive numbers and wide geographical distribution, they are understudied as intermediate hosts for the transmission of human pathogens that continue to cause significant infectious diseases in the world. With a growing interest in utilizing snails as model organisms in the medical sciences, notably, in comparative immunology among others, there is a need to examine recent advances that have begun to explore how studies in snail host-pathogen interactions can facilitate the development of novel approaches towards ameliorating some of the diseases that snails transmit.
In this Research Topic, we will present recent progress in ongoing research towards elucidating mechanisms of anti-pathogen innate defense responses in snails. We will provide overviews of different mollusks and their place in human disease and how they can be utilized to understand better host-pathogen interactions and defense systems. This Research Topic will present various Gastropoda as models for a range of human conditions such as infection, cancer, and aging.
We welcome authors to submit manuscripts focusing on the following subtopics:
• Reviews of new findings with respect to innate defense systems
• New methodologies for studying pathogen-mollusk interactions
• Comparisons between different mollusk types
• Comparisons between the mollusk host and the primary hosts
• Broad and deep knowledge of mollusk behavior
• Routes of infectivity
• Molluscs as models
• Transgenic mollusks
• Improvements to genome databases
• Sentinels for drug treatments
Gastropoda comprises the largest class of invertebrates in the phylum Mollusca. These diverse snails and slugs are found in a wide variety of habitats from marine to freshwater environments in tropical and temperate regions of the world. Despite their massive numbers and wide geographical distribution, they are understudied as intermediate hosts for the transmission of human pathogens that continue to cause significant infectious diseases in the world. With a growing interest in utilizing snails as model organisms in the medical sciences, notably, in comparative immunology among others, there is a need to examine recent advances that have begun to explore how studies in snail host-pathogen interactions can facilitate the development of novel approaches towards ameliorating some of the diseases that snails transmit.
In this Research Topic, we will present recent progress in ongoing research towards elucidating mechanisms of anti-pathogen innate defense responses in snails. We will provide overviews of different mollusks and their place in human disease and how they can be utilized to understand better host-pathogen interactions and defense systems. This Research Topic will present various Gastropoda as models for a range of human conditions such as infection, cancer, and aging.
We welcome authors to submit manuscripts focusing on the following subtopics:
• Reviews of new findings with respect to innate defense systems
• New methodologies for studying pathogen-mollusk interactions
• Comparisons between different mollusk types
• Comparisons between the mollusk host and the primary hosts
• Broad and deep knowledge of mollusk behavior
• Routes of infectivity
• Molluscs as models
• Transgenic mollusks
• Improvements to genome databases
• Sentinels for drug treatments
