Taxonomic and Functional Differences in Cervical Microbiome Associated with Cervical Cancer Development

Sci Rep. 2020 Jun 16;10(1):9720. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-66607-4.

Abstract

The cervical microbiome is associated with cervical cancer risk, but how microbial diversity and functional profiles change in cervical cancer remains unclear. Herein, we investigated microbial-compositional and functional differences between a control group and a high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and cervical cancer (CIN2/3-CC) group. After retrospective collection of 92 cervical swab samples, we carried out 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing on 50 and 42 samples from the control and CIN2/3-CC groups, respectively. The EzBioCloud pipeline was applied to identify the genomic features associated with the groups using 16S rRNA data. A linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) was performed to assess the enrichment in the assigned taxonomic and functional profiles. We found a lower richness in the control group relative to the CIN2/3-CC group; however, the β-diversity tended to be similar between the groups. The LEfSe analysis showed that a phylum Sacchaaribacteria_TM7, 11 genera, and 21 species were more abundant in the CIN2/3-CC group and that one uncharacterized Gardnerella species was more abundant only in the control group. Further characterization of the functional pathways using EzBioCloud showed that the 4 KEGG orthologs (Phosphotransferase system [PTS] sucrose-specific IIA, IIB, IIC components and PTS cellubiose-specific IIC component) were involved in the KEGG pathway of starch and sucrose metabolism. The two pathways of folate biosynthesis and oxidative phosphorylation were more abundant in the CIN2/3-CC group. Further confirmation of these results in larger samples can help to elucidate the potential association between the cervical microbiome and cervical cancer.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Cervix Uteri / microbiology*
  • Female
  • Genomics / methods
  • Humans
  • Microbiota / genetics
  • Middle Aged
  • RNA, Ribosomal, 16S
  • Republic of Korea
  • Retrospective Studies
  • Uterine Cervical Dysplasia / genetics
  • Uterine Cervical Dysplasia / microbiology
  • Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / genetics*
  • Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / microbiology*

Substances

  • RNA, Ribosomal, 16S