[Gastric cancer: epidemiologic profile 2001-2007 in Lima, Peru].

Objective: To describe and compare the demographic and social characteristics as well as lifestyles of patients with gastric cancer against patients with other important gastric disorders, who attended at main reference health services in Lima, Peru.

Methods: Case control study, matched by sex and age + 2 years, applying a questionnaire to 96 cases with gastric cancer, and to 96 controls from September 2001 to November 2007.

Results: There were no significant differences about ethnicity; marital status; exposure to minerals, wood, and metal dusts; tobacco and alcohol; red meat consumption; salt addition; food temperature.

A mutant of the Arabidopsis phosphate transporter PHT1;1 displays enhanced arsenic accumulation.

The exceptional toxicity of arsenate [As(V)] is derived from its close chemical similarity to phosphate (Pi), which allows the metalloid to be easily incorporated into plant cells through the high-affinity Pi transport system. In this study, we identified an As(V)-tolerant mutant of Arabidopsis thaliana named pht1;1-3, which harbors a semidominant allele coding for the high-affinity Pi transporter PHT1;1. pht1;1-3 displays a slow rate of As(V) uptake that ultimately enables the mutant to accumulate double the arsenic found in wild-type plants.

[Sexual relations and the perception of risk of acquiring STD/AIDS among young adult men in Lima, Peru].

The purpose of this study was to identify men's co-responsibility in the negotiation process of dual protection, according gender, in their first and most recent sexual relationships, and their perception of the risk of STD/AIDS. We surveyed 750 males from 19 to 29 years of age in 2,250 randomly selected households in metropolitan Lima, Peru. The majority mentioned condoms as a contraceptive technique (95%).

Versatile gene-specific sequence tags for Arabidopsis functional genomics: transcript profiling and reverse genetics applications.

Microarray transcript profiling and RNA interference are two new technologies crucial for large-scale gene function studies in multicellular eukaryotes. Both rely on sequence-specific hybridization between complementary nucleic acid strands, inciting us to create a collection of gene-specific sequence tags (GSTs) representing at least 21,500 Arabidopsis genes and which are compatible with both approaches. The GSTs were carefully selected to ensure that each of them shared no significant similarity with any other region in the Arabidopsis genome.