PI16 and cancer: As a result, the increase in genus Fusobacterium abundance was found to be significantly associated with the down-regulated expression of PI16 (r = − 0.993, p-value = 0.008, df = 2; Table 2) and also significantly associated with the decreased expression of FCRLA (r = 0.956, p-value = 0.044, df = 2; Table 2) and LSP1 (r = 0.954, p-value = 0.046, df = 2; Table 2) in cancer tissues in comparison with the healthy tissues.