Recently, it has been proposed that intestinal bacteria
may play a role in the etiology of gastric and colorectal
cancer (Hasan et al. 2010). Tyrer et al. investigated
whether OMVs from intestinal E. coli could be genotoxic.
They found that E. coli-derived OMVs are readily internalized
into Caco-2 cells, where they are potentially capable
of inducing oxidative stress, leading to DNA damage,
rereplication, and aneuploidy in susceptible cells. In addition,
O157:H7-derived OMVs generated aneuploid cells
typical of those with chromosomal instability