In a paper published online in advance in Genome Research this week, a team led by investigators at the Broad Institute reports its characterization of colorectal carcinoma-associated microbiota by comparing whole-genome sequences from nine tumor-normal pairs. Using qPCR and 16S rDNA analysis, the team found that "Fusobacterium sequences were enriched in carcinomas."
In a related paper, researchers at the BC Cancer Agency and elsewhere in Canada report an association between the bacteria and colorectal carcinomas, saying that with an RNA-seq followed by host sequence subtraction approach, they "found marked over-representation of Fusobacterium nucleatum sequences in tumors relative to control specimens."
The Netherlands Cancer Institute's Jos Jonkers and his colleagues present shear-splink, an approach "for the semiquantitative high-throughput analysis of insertional mutations." The team also reports its launch of the Insertional Mutagenesis Database, a "publicly available Web-based application to analyze both retroviral- and transposon-based insertional mutagenesis data."
Uppsala University's Erik Axelsson and his colleagues show in a paper published online in advance in Genome Research this week that the "death of PRDM9 coincides with stabilization of the recombination landscape in the dog genome." Moreover, the team says that "genetic determinants of recombination hotspots in the dog genome may ... reflect a fundamental process of relevance to diverse animal species."