Psychosocial factors and the development of breast cancer / 中华健康管理学杂志

Objective To investigate the impacts of psychosocial factors on the development of breast cancer.Methods Thirty-seven patients with confirmed breast cancer and 37 healthy women were enrolled in this study to complete psychological assessment,including ENRICH marital inventory,Life Event Scale(LES),Social Support Rate Scale(SSRS),and Trait Copying Styles Questionnaire(TCSQ).Results In comparison with the healthy controls,the patients experienced more stress events and negative response,and lowered quality of marriage over the last 5 years.The logistic regressive analyses indicated that the important contributors to breast cancer were stress events,objective social support and negative coping styles.Conclusion Stress events,insufficient access to available psychosocial support and negative responses are important risk factors of breast cancer in women.

Dual screening for targeted gene replacement mutant in Magnaporthe oryzae with GUS as negative marker / 生物工程学报

To improve the efficiency of targeted gene replacement (TGR), a dual screen (DS) system with gusA gene as negative selective marker (GUS-DS) was developed in Magnaporthe oryzae. First, we tested the endogenous beta-glucuronidase (GUS) activities of 78 fungal strains. All tested strains were GUS-, only with 3 exceptions. Whereas, after the gusA being introduced in, M. oryzae, Fusarium oxysporum and Colletotrichum lagenarium acquired high GUS activities. The gusA is thus usable as a selective maker in fungal species. With gusA as the negative marker, HPH gene as the positive marker, and the peroxisomal targeting signal receptor genes MGPEX5 and MGPEX7 as 2 instances of target genes, we established the GUS-DS system. After transformation, we collected the transformants from hygromycin B screen media and then tested the GUS activities of them. The GUS- ones were selected as potential mutants and checked in succession by PCR and Southern blotting to identify the true mutants and calculate the efficiency of GUS-DS. As a result, GUS-DS improved the screen efficiency for delta mgpex5 from 65.8% to 90.6%, and for delta mgpex7 from 31.2% to 82.8%. In addition, we established a multiple PCR (M-PCR) method for mutant confirmation. By amplifying the different regions at the targeted locus, M-PCR differentiated the wild type, the ectopic transformants and the mutants effectively and rapidly, and had the same reliability as Southern blotting. In conclusion, GUS-DS and M-PCR are useful tools to improve the efficiency of TGR and would be helpful for fungal genomics.