Recovering anaerobic bacterial genomes in saliva, tumour and blood whole genome sequencing data from patients with prostate cancer

Microbial constituents in the gastrointestinal tract, the urine and prostate tissue are being linked with clinical differences in prostate cancer, and a recent meta-analysis has linked periodontal disease to this cancer. Several hypotheses exist regarding how specific bacteria can contribute towards the development of prostate cancer. Recovering microbial genomes, and their genomic features, from clinical samples and investigating fine-scale taxonomy is a critical first step in investigating causality. Here, we describe the microbial diversity of samples associated with prostate cancer. Metagenomic assembly of non-human reads from the PanProstate Cancer Group, derived from blood, saliva samples and prostate tissue whole-genome data ( N = 247), successfully reconstructed 249 highly complete bacterial genomes, predominantly from oral samples. Our data, reveals eighteen bacterial species from the oral cavity without species level classification, while demonstrating a wide range of known species. This approach enables us to gain additional insights of the microbes in cancer patients at no additional sequencing cost and has the potential to reveal new links that could improve our understanding of cancer initiation and development.