Table 2. Normalised relative abundance of different regions of mtDNA in skeletal muscle.

Tissue	Age	Region				CV (%)	P
		A	B	C	D
T1	1 h	1	1	1	1
T2	5 weeks	1.00 ± 0.05 (10)	1.03 ± 0 (3)	0.97 ± 0.04 (6)	1.03 ± 0 (4)	3	0.88
T3	5 years	0.99 ± 0.14 (8)	1.09 ± 0.23 (5)	1.07 ± 0.19 (4)	0.68 ± 0 (2)	20	0.68
T4	50 years	1.01 ± 0.07 (8)	1.01 ± 0.04 (5)	0.91 ± 0.03 (4)	1.11 ± 0 (2)	9	0.41
T5	84 years	0.98 ± 0.04 (12)	1.12 ± 0.07 (5)	1 ± 0 (4)	0.93 ± 0.07 (3)	8	0.23
T6	90 years	1.00 ± 0.08 (8)	0.90 ± 0.15 (5)	1.03 ± 0.28 (4)	1.12 ± 0 (4)	9	0.77

The mean relative abundance data for each tissue (T2–T6), region by region (Table 1), were determined relative to the intensity of the relevant PCR products from T1 (which was considered to have the lowest abundance of deletions in mtDNA of the tissue samples used here; see text). The normalised values for the reference tissue T1 are by definition unity for each region. The values for other tissues are displayed with standard errors of the mean. The numbers of repeat measurements made are displayed in parentheses. CV indicates coefficient of variation, namely the coefficient of the standard deviation divided by the mean; the mean CV for tissues T2–T6 was 9.8. P values were derived from analysis of variance for data from the four regions of each skeletal muscle sample and incorporate the multiple results that contribute to each average regional value, initially expressed in relative units (see text).