Fig. 3.

Duplicate estimation of the number of TREC molecules per sample was performed for 175 individuals. Each data point represents the average value obtained from two simultaneous PCRs performed on two (i and ii) occasions for a single donor. Overall, the assay was shown to be highly reproducible as evidenced by the regression line's closeness to the diagonal and Pearson's correlation coefficient r = 0.96 (p < 0.01). However, as the number of TREC determined per reaction approached 10, the reproducibility of the assay was less. The vertical dashed line represents the average final value of WBLogTREC/ml, calculated according to Eq. (1), for samples in which 10 TREC were measured. Values to the left of the line thus represent samples with less than 10 TREC and those to the right those with more than 10 TREC.