Correction: Associations of sexually transmitted infections and bacterial vaginosis with abnormal cervical cytology: A cross-sectional survey with 9090 community women in China.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Associations of sexually transmitted infections and bacterial vaginosis with abnormal cervical cytology: A cross-sectional survey with 9090 community women in China.

Background: Although it is well acknowledged that persistent infection with high-risk human papillomavirus types in genital sites plays a crucial role in the development of squamous cell cervical carcinoma, there is no unanimous consensus on the association between non-HPV sexually transmitted infections and abnormal cervical cytology.

Methods: In the present study, we evaluated cervical cytology status, sexually transmitted infections and bacterial vaginosis status, and collected social-demographic information among recruited participants to explore the association of STIs and bacterial vaginosis with abnormal cervical cytology.

Results: 9,090 women's specimens were successfully tested, with a total of 8,733 (96.

MISSA 2.0: an updated synthetic biology toolbox for assembly of orthogonal CRISPR/Cas systems.

Efficient generation of plants carrying mutations in multiple genes remains a challenge. Using two or more orthogonal CRISPR/Cas systems can generate plants with multi-gene mutations, but assembly of these systems requires a robust, high-capacity toolkit. Here, we describe MISSA 2.

Egg cell-specific promoter-controlled CRISPR/Cas9 efficiently generates homozygous mutants for multiple target genes in Arabidopsis in a single generation.

Arabidopsis mutants produced by constitutive overexpression of the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing system are usually mosaics in the T1 generation. In this study, we used egg cell-specific promoters to drive the expression of Cas9 and obtained non-mosaic T1 mutants for multiple target genes with high efficiency. Comparisons of 12 combinations of eight promoters and two terminators found that the efficiency of the egg cell-specific promoter-controlled CRISPR/Cas9 system depended on the presence of a suitable terminator, and the composite promoter generated by fusing two egg cell-specific promoters resulted in much higher efficiency of mutation in the T1 generation compared with the single promoters.

A CRISPR/Cas9 toolkit for multiplex genome editing in plants.

Background: To accelerate the application of the CRISPR/Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/ CRISPR-associated protein 9) system to a variety of plant species, a toolkit with additional plant selectable markers, more gRNA modules, and easier methods for the assembly of one or more gRNA expression cassettes is required.

Results: We developed a CRISPR/Cas9 binary vector set based on the pGreen or pCAMBIA backbone, as well as a gRNA (guide RNA) module vector set, as a toolkit for multiplex genome editing in plants. This toolkit requires no restriction enzymes besides BsaI to generate final constructs harboring maize-codon optimized Cas9 and one or more gRNAs with high efficiency in as little as one cloning step.

[Comparison of two quantitation methods of circulating tumor cells in patients with small cell lung cancer].

Objective: To establish a quantitative method to detect circulating tumor cells (CTC) in patients with small cell lung cancer, and analyze its sensitivity and stability.

Methods: A specific primer and probe for prepro-gastrin-releasing peptide (preproGRP) was designed and a quantitative RT-PCR method was established to detect preproGRP mRNA. Cell incorporation method was used to evaluate the sensitivity.

[Clinical value of CEA and CYFRA21-1 as an assessment indicator of therapeutic efficacy in advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients].

Objective: To investigate the value of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) or cytokeratin 19 fragment (CYFRA21-1) as an assessment indicator of therapeutic efficacy in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients.

Methods: 228 cases of advanced NSCLC with chemotherapy were enrolled into this retrospective study. The serum CEA or CYFRA21-1 levels of all patients were above the cut-off limit before treatment.