Oestrogen receptors and breast cancer. are we prepared to move forward? A critical review

It is nearly 60 years since the identification of the oestrogen hormone receptor (ER) in breast cancer, a discovery that radically transformed the clinical management of the disease. Hormonal therapy with anti-oestrogens (Tamoxifen and Aromatase inhibitors) antagonise ER function and became the mainstay treatment until today. Around 70% of breast tumours are classified as oestrogen dependent, yet the mechanism of action of other hormones in breast cancer growth both independently and interacting with ER as well as their targeted therapies have yet to find a place in the clinic. In this article, I critically review the scientific literature for the period 1960-2016, examine the rise and persistence of the oestrogen hypothesis as well as the neglect of alternative hormonal explanations. By using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of the scientific field alongside feminist science scholars to explore the impact of gendered assumptions on science, the analysis provides insight into the dominant role of the oestrogen hypothesis and the struggles for legitimation of different alternative perspectives. I consider these alternative approaches as “internal” struggles for scientific authority, which are in turn, socially determined by “external” gender values that reinforce a binary arrangement of male/female bodies based on fixed molecular hormonal traits

Differentially expressed genes during malting and correlation with malting quality phenotypes in barley (Hordeum vulgare

Breeding for malting quality is an important goal of malting barley breeding programs. Malting quality is a complex phenotype that combines a large number of interrelated components, each of which shows complex inheritance. Currently, only a few genes involved in determining malting quality have been characterized. We combined transcript profiling with phenotypic correlations to identify candidate genes for malting quality. The Barley1 GeneChip® array containing 22,792 probe sets was used to conduct transcript profiling of genes expressed in several different stages of malting of four malting cultivars. Genes that were differentially expressed in comparisons between different malting stages relative to ungerminated seed, as well as in comparisons between malting cultivars in the same malting stage were identified. Correlation analysis of 723 differentially expressed genes with malting quality phenotypes showed that 11–102 of these genes correlated with six malting quality phenotypes. Genes involved in carbohydrate metabolism were among the positively correlated genes. Genes for protein and lipid metabolism, cell wall organization and biogenesis, and genes involved in stress and defense response also correlated with malting quality phenotypes. Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were generated from a ‘malting-gene enriched’ cDNA library made by suppression subtractive hybridization between malted and ungerminated seeds of ‘Morex’. Eleven percent of the ESTs had no significant homology with sequences in the databases, suggesting that there may be other malting-related genes not represented in the barley gene chip array. The results provide candidate genes for malting quality phenotypes that need to be functionally validated