Race and Ethnicity Specific Signatures in Colorectal Carcinoma Microbiomes
Authors: Q. Yang1, B. Gerevits1, A. Rustani1, R. Singh1, C. Wultsch1,2 and K. Krampis1,3
1Bioinformatics and Computational Genomics Laboratory, Department of Biological Sciences, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, NY; 2Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY; 3Institute for Computational Biomedicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY.
Over the past decade, human microbiome research has made strides in relating disease to microbiome composition and diversity. More specifically, certain human microbiome profiles have been associated with an increased risk of cancer. In addition, racial/ethnic health disparities in incidence and mortality for cancer persist. Here, we utilized 16S rRNA sequence data to compare microbiome profiles associated with colorectal carcinoma tissue samples collected from African American, Caucasian, and Asian patients (n = 63) in the United States. Specifically, we performed differential abundance analysis using R packages DESeq2 and egdeR to characterize microbiome composition of colorectal carcinoma tissue samples and to identify race and ethnicity-specific bacterial signatures. We found that bacterial genera Fusobacterium, Prevotella, Sharpea and Dialister were significantly more abundant in African-American colon cancer patients than Asians. Bacterial genera Dialister, Prevotella and Fusobacterium were significantly less abundant in African-Americans than Caucasians. Furthermore, genera Fusobacterium, Clostridium, J2-29, Bacteroides and Alistipes were significantly more abundant in Asians compared to Caucasians. These findings reveal important discrepancies and variations in colorectal cancer microbiota studied across different racial and ethnic groups. We recommend conducting further research with larger samples sizes to accurately determine the validity of race- and ethnicity-specific microbiome-based biomarkers identified here. In summary, the consideration of race and ethnicity in human microbiome research has great potential to further advance targeted treatment as well as diagnostic, and preventive tools for cancer.
Email questions and comments about this abstract to qfanyang54@gmail.com.
