As part of the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, we published a Registered Report (Repass et al., 2016), that described how we intended to replicate an experiment from the paper ‘Fusobacterium nucleatum infection is prevalent in human colorectal carcinoma’ (Castellarin et al., 2012). Here we report the results. When measuring Fusobacterium nucleatum DNA by qPCR in colorectal carcinoma (CRC), adjacent normal tissue, and separate matched control tissue, we did not detect a signal for F. nucleatum in most samples: 25% of CRCs, 15% of adjacent normal, and 0% of matched control tissue were positive based on quantitative PCR (qPCR) and confirmed by sequencing of the qPCR products. When only samples with detectable F. nucleatum in CRC and adjacent normal tissue were compared, the difference was not statistically significant, while the original study reported a statistically significant increase in F. nucleatum expression in CRC compared to adjacent normal tissue (Figure 2; Castellarin et al., 2012). Finally, we report a meta-analysis of the result, which suggests F. nucleatum expression is increased in CRC, but is confounded by the inability to detect F. nucleatum in most samples. The difference in F. nucleatum expression between CRC and adjacent normal tissues was thus smaller than the original study, and not detected in most samples.

中文翻译：

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复制研究：具核梭杆菌感染在人类结直肠癌中普遍存在

作为重现性项目：癌症生物学的一部分，我们发表了一份注册报告（Repass 等人，2016 年），其中描述了我们打算如何复制论文“具核梭杆菌感染在人类结肠直肠癌中普遍存在”（Castellarin 等人）中的实验。等，2012）。我们在这里报告结果。在结直肠癌 (CRC)、邻近正常组织和单独的匹配对照组织中通过 qPCR 测量具核梭杆菌 DNA 时，我们没有在大多数样本中检测到具核梭杆菌的信号：25% 的 CRC、15% 的邻近正常组织和0% 的匹配对照组织基于定量 PCR (qPCR) 呈阳性，并通过 qPCR 产物的测序证实。当仅比较 CRC 和邻近正常组织中可检测到 F. nucleatum 的样本时，差异无统计学意义，而最初的研究报告说，与邻近的正常组织相比，结直肠癌中 F. nucleatum 的表达在统计学上显着增加（图 2；Castellarin 等，2012）。最后，我们报告了对结果的荟萃分析，这表明 F. nucleatum 表达在 CRC 中增加，但由于无法在大多数样本中检测到 F. nucleatum 而混淆。因此，CRC 和邻近正常组织之间的 F. nucleatum 表达差异小于原始研究，并且在大多数样本中未检测到。