Fig. 2.

Molecular analysis of telomeric array lengths of normal, immortalized, and transformed chicken cell lines highlights the heterogeneity of array sizes and genome-related concentration differences. Telomeric repeat sizes were determined using the TeloTAGGG Telomere Length Assay (Roche Applied Science) following O'Hare and Delany [2009]. The same amount of DNA (150 ng) was analyzed for each cell line. The immortalized cell line OU2 was not previously characterized for telomere length and was compared to the immortalized DF-1 line, normal CEF001, and transformed DT40. OU2 exhibits a heterogeneous telomeric profile with arrays across a broad range of molecular-weight size classes and not unlike other chicken genomes. As reported previously [O'Hare and Delany, 2009], DF-1 has the greatest telomeric content and DT40 the least telomeric content (and supported by total telomeric DNA contents, see Results), although both genomes maintain heterogeneously sized telomeric arrays.