Genome sequences of Fusobacterium nucleatum isolates obtained from patients with colorectal cancer
Fusobacterium nucleatum is associated with colorectal cancer (CRC). We isolated F. nucleatum from in both CRC tissues and saliva samples and showed the possibility that F. mucleatum is present in CRC tissues originating from the oral cavity using an arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction (AP-PCR). In this study, using pairwise whole-genome comparisons for each pair, the average nucleotide identity values of isolates indicated as same strain by AP-PCR were more than 99.99% for both strains, demonstrating that these pairs of isolates are identical strains. This result suggests that strain-level discrimination of F. nucleatum is required for etiological studies in CRC studies.