Most came from the mouth, including new types of Porphyromonas, which the team has previously linked to more aggressive prostate cancer, and Treponema.
Whether they contribute to prostate cancer is unknown, but this work provides new insights into microbes in cancer patients and could uncover links that improve understanding of how cancer develops.
The discovery shows how detailed bacterial genomes can be assembled from the sequencing data left over when researchers study human DNA, at no additional cost and without collecting a single extra sample.