RNA landscape of the emerging cancer-bug Fusobacterium nucleatum. RNA landscape of the emerging cancer-bug Fusobacterium nucleatum

Fusobacterium nucleatum, long known as a constituent of the oral microflora, has recently garnered much attention for its newly discovered prevalence in colorectal and breast cancer tissue. The growing interest in this emerging cancer-associated bacterium sharply contrasts with a paucity of knowledge about its basic gene expression features and physiological responses. Post-transcriptional networks are also unknown, for fusobacteria lack all established small RNA-associated proteins. Here, we present high-resolution global RNA maps for two clinically relevant F. nucleatum subspecies for different growth conditions, and use these to uncover fundamental aspects of fusobacterial gene expression architecture and a previously unknown suite of noncoding RNAs. Developing a new vector for functional analysis of fusobacterial genes, we identify a conserved oxygen-induced small RNA as a post-transcriptional repressor of major porin FomA. Our findings provide a crucial step towards delineating the regulatory networks enabling F. nucleatum to colonize different compartments of the human body. Overall design: Samples of different growth stages were taken for RNA extraction. Isolated RNA was used for cDNA library generation following the dRNA-seq protocol.