Figure 1

Standard curve used to calculate absolute telomere length. C_T (cycle threshold) is the number of PCR cycles for which enough SYBR green fluorescence was detected above background. A) Graph shows standard curve for calculating length of telomere sequence per reaction tube. X-axis represents amount of telomere sequence in kb per reaction. Correlation coefficient within the linear range was 0.98. The graph shown here represents the linear range of the PCR. The DNA amount was optimised so that experimental samples are detected within the linear range. The value generated from the experimental samples utilising this standard curve was equal to kb of telomere sequence per sample. B) Graph shows standard curve for calculating genome copies using 36B4 copy number. Correlation coefficient was 0.99. Standard curves were generated using an AB 7300 Sequence Detection System with the SDS Ver. 1.9 software (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA).