Figure 4

Plot of fluorescence observations versus cycle number obtained from the same starting DNA but in presence of decreasing amounts of amplification mix. This slight PCR inhibition produces curves which are less steep than controls and shifted towards the right. When analysed by the threshold method, these curves showed higher Ct values with a CV% of 1.45% (A). An example of Cy ₀ procedure has been reported for the same data set (B). In this method, the amplification reactions are described by the tangent crossing the inflection point of fluorescence curves. As shown in this figure, the straight-lines originating from PCRs, characterized by slightly different PCR efficiency and the same starting amounts, tend to cross into a common point near the x-axis leading to small variations in the Cy ₀ values (CV% = 0.6%).