RT Journal
A1 Boot, Arnoud
A1 Ng, Alvin W.T.
A1 Chong, Fui Teen
A1 Ho, Szu-Chi
A1 Yu, Willie
A1 Tan, 
Daniel S.W.
A1 Iyer, N. Gopalakrishna
A1 Rozen, Steven G.
T1 Characterization of colibactin-associated mutational signature in an Asian oral squamous cell carcinoma and in other mucosal tumor types
JF Genome Research 
JO Genome Research 
YR 2020 
FD June 01 
VO 30 
IS 6 
SP 803 
OP 813 
DO 10.1101/gr.255620.119 
UL http://genome.cshlp.org/content/30/6/803.abstract 
AB Mutational signatures can reveal the history of mutagenic processes that cells were exposed to before and during tumorigenesis. We expect that as-yet-undiscovered mutational processes will shed further light on mutagenesis leading to carcinogenesis. With this in mind, we analyzed the mutational spectra of 36 Asian oral squamous cell carcinomas. The mutational spectra of two samples from patients who presented with oral bacterial infections showed novel mutational signatures. One of these novel signatures, SBS_AnT, is characterized by a preponderance of thymine mutations, strong transcriptional strand bias, and enrichment for adenines in the 4 bp 5′ of mutation sites. The mutational signature described in this manuscript was shown to be caused by colibactin, a bacterial mutagen produced by E. coli carrying the pks-island. Examination of publicly available sequencing data revealed SBS_AnT in 25 tumors from several mucosal tissue types, expanding the list of tissues in which this mutational signature is observed.