Understanding the role of Fusobacterium nucleatum metabolism in colon cancer initiation and progression

Accumulating evidence suggests that dysbiosis, a state of pathological imbalance in the human gut microbiome, is present in patients suffering from colorectal cancer (CRC). 16S rRNA gene sequencing, as well as metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analyses, identified specific bacteria being associated with CRC. Among others, Fusobacterium ssp. have been found to directly interact with cancer or immune cells of their host. However, only a limited number of CRC-associated microbes have been examined for host-microbial interactions and, as such, the role of bacteria in the etiology of the disease remains largely elusive.
Our aim is the development of predictive and experimental models that allow to not only study the host-microbiota interactions but are also amenable to high-throughput experimentation and large-scale omics-data integration. Ultimately, such models should help to get from meta-omics to cellular mechanism and, moreover, serve as tools for reproducible analyses of host-microbial interaction mechanisms of on a transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic level. Our research proposes an integrative study approach allowing us to bridge meta-omics with functional mechanisms by focusing on the interaction taking place between F. nucleatum and patient-derived CRC cells.