Discovery Cohort Cancer Patient Characteristics.

1<p>Pathologic tumor stage according to the American Joint Committee on Cancer guidelines (T  =  tumor size, N  =  regional lymph node metastasis, M =  distant metastasis)</p

Conformation Cohort Cancer Patient Characteristics.

1<p>Pathologic tumor stage according to the American Joint Committee on Cancer guidelines (T  =  tumor size, N  =  regional lymph node metastasis, M  =  distant metastasis</p

Change in relative abundance of phyla associated with cancer compared to anatomically matched contralateral clinically normal samples in Study 1.

<p>(a – e) Relative abundance of each of the five more abundant phyla in cancers compared to clinically normal samples from each of five patients. Note, that data are shown on different scales, reflecting the abundance of the phyla. The magnitudes of the changes in abundance are clearly greater than the statistical counting noise, as indicated by the error bar estimates, which are based on the square root of the actual number of reads. (f) Change in relative abundance shown as the difference in abundance of phyla associated with cancers compared to anatomically matched contralateral clinically normal samples. In cancers, decreases in the relative abundance of <i>Firmicutes</i> and <i>Actinobacteria</i> were seen in all patients, while the relative abundance of <i>Fusobacteria</i> was elevated in cancers from all patients.</p

Distinguishing cancer and normal samples.

<p>PCoA based on Weighted UniFrac distance between samples given abundance of 12 OTUs. Axis 1 (PCoA1): 54% of variation explained. Axis 2 (PCoA2): 24% of variation explained. N0 and N+ indicate the nodal status of the cancer patient, N0  =  node negative, N+  =  node positive. Cancer control and pre-cancer control are contralateral clinically normal patient samples. Other identifies samples from healthy normal individuals.</p

Distribution of phyla in normal and cancer samples in Study 1.

<p>The relative distribution of phyla (percent of sequences) is shown for each patient sample with clinically normal samples shown together on top and cancer samples on the bottom.</p