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Mutational signature in colorectal cancer caused by genotoxic pks + E. coli

Cayetano Pleguezuelos-Manzano, Jens Puschhof, Axel Rosendahl Huber, Arne van Hoeck, Henry M. Wood, Jason Nomburg, Carino Gurjao, Freek Manders, Guillaume Dalmasso, Paul B. Stege, Fernanda L. Paganelli, Maarten H. Geurts, Joep Beumer, Tomohiro Mizutani, Yi Miao, Reinier van der Linden, Stefan van der Elst, Genomics England Research Consortium, K. Christopher Garcia, Janetta Top, Rob J. L. Willems, Marios Giannakis, Richard Bonnet, Phil Quirke, Matthew Meyerson, Edwin Cuppen, Ruben van Boxtel & Hans Clevers

Published: 27/02/2020

Abstract

Various species of the intestinal microbiota have been associated with the development of colorectal cancer1,2, but it has not been demonstrated that bacteria have a direct role in the occurrence of oncogenic mutations. Escherichia coli can carry the pathogenicity island pks, which encodes a set of enzymes that synthesize colibactin3. This compound is believed to alkylate DNA on adenine residues4,5 and induces double-strand breaks in cultured cells3. Here we expose human intestinal organoids to genotoxic pks+ E. coli by repeated luminal injection over five months. Whole-genome sequencing of clonal organoids before and after this exposure revealed a distinct mutational signature that was absent from organoids injected with isogenic pks-mutant bacteria. The same mutational signature was detected in a subset of 5,876 human cancer genomes from two independent cohorts, predominantly in colorectal cancer. Our study describes a distinct mutational signature in colorectal cancer and implies that the underlying mutational process results directly from past exposure to bacteria carrying the colibactin-producing pks pathogenicity island.

Full Access Link: Nature