1e:T45e,We normally live in symbiosis with approximately 10(13) bacteria present in the colon. Among the several mechanisms maintaining the bacteria/host balance, there is limited understanding of the structure, function, and properties of intestinal mucus. We now demonstrate that the mouse colonic mucus consists of two layers extending 150 mum above the epithelial cells. Proteomics revealed that both of these layers have similar protein composition, with the large gel-forming mucin Muc2 as the major structural component. The inner layer is densely packed, firmly attached to the epithelium, and devoid of bacteria. In contrast, the outer layer is movable, has an expanded volume due to proteolytic cleavages of the Muc2 mucin, and is colonized by bacteria. Muc2(-/-) mice have bacteria in direct contact with the epithelial cells and far down in the crypts, explaining the inflammation and cancer development observed in these animals. These findings show that the Muc2 mucin can build a mucus barrier that separates bacteria from the colon epithelia and suggest that defects in this mucus can cause colon inflammation.1f:T49f,Colorectal cancers comprise a complex mixture of malignant cells, nontransformed cells, and microorganisms. Fusobacterium nucleatum is among the most prevalent bacterial species in colorectal cancer tissues. Here we show that colonization of human colorectal cancers with Fusobacterium and its associated microbiome-including Bacteroides, Selenomonas, and Prevotella species-is maintained in distal metastases, demonstrating microbiome stability between paired primary and metastatic tumors. In situ hybridization analysis revealed that Fusobacterium is predominantly associated with cancer cells in the metastatic lesions. Mouse xenografts of human primary colorectal adenocarcinomas were found to retain viable Fusobacterium and its associated microbiome through successive passages. Treatment of mice bearing a colon cancer xenograft with the antibiotic metronidazole reduced Fusobacterium load, cancer cell proliferation, and overall tumor growth. These observations argue for further investigation of antimicrobial interventions as a potential treatment for patients with Fusobacterium-associated colorectal cancer.20:T551,Because foods are consumed in combination, it is difficult in observational studies to separate the effects of single foods on the development of diseases. A possible way to examine the combined effect of food intakes is to derive dietary patterns by using appropriate statistical methods. The objective of this study was to apply a new statistical method, reduced rank regression (RRR), that is more flexible and powerful than the classic principal component analysis. RRR can be used efficiently in nutritional epidemiology by choosing disease-specific response variables and determining combinations of food intake that explain as much response variation as possible. The authors applied RRR to extract dietary patterns from 49 food groups, specifying four diabetes-related nutrients and nutrient ratios as responses. Data were derived from a nested German case-control study within the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Potsdam study consisting of 193 cases with incident type 2 diabetes identified until 2001 and 385 controls. The four factors extracted by RRR explained 93.1% of response variation, whereas the first four factors obtained by principal component analysis accounted for only 41.9%. In contrast to principal component analysis and other methods, the new RRR method extracted a significant risk factor for diabetes.

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