Manipulation of the Gut Microbiota Reveals Role in Colon Tumorigenesis.

ABSTRACT: There is growing evidence that individuals with colonic adenomas and carcinomas harbor a distinct microbiota. Alterations to the gut microbiota may allow the outgrowth of bacterial populations that induce genomic mutations or exacerbate tumor-promoting inflammation. In addition, it is likely that the loss of key bacterial populations may result in the loss of protective functions that are normally provided by the microbiota. We explored the role of the gut microbiota in colon tumorigenesis by using an inflammation-based murine model. We observed that perturbing the microbiota with different combinations of antibiotics reduced the number of tumors at the end of the model. Using the random forest machine learning algorithm, we successfully modeled the number of tumors that developed over the

SUBMITTER: Zackular JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4863627 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan-Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature