Burioli Lab

Research focus

ERC Starting Grant · 2023

Mechanisms and evolutionary significance of hyperploidy variations in a long-lived parasitic cancer

Transmissible cancers are fascinating recently discovered biological entities. They have acquired the ability to cross host boundaries and spread between animals, even sometimes interspecifically, by the direct transfer of cancerous cells. In addition, despite asexual reproduction they have been shown to persist for hundreds or thousands of years in host populations. Importantly, in the absence of known sexual-like reproduction mechanism, transmissible cancers must cope with clonal degeneration. One challenging question that arises is to understand the evolutionary processes and molecular mechanisms by which genetic diversity can maintain in such a long-term clonal context. Several…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.