Figure 1.
Traditional qPCR approaches adapted for use in single cells show that, even in homogeneous cell lines using a ΔΔCT calculation to interpret qPCR data, intercellular variability can be observed. The fold difference in expression of BCR-ABL for each cell population was compared to the average BCR-ABL expression of the extracted RNA. For K562 cells, the use of ABL as a control gene and comparison of its expression to BCR-ABL gene expression is a typical approach. As the input cell number decreases, the mean expression value, indicated by a horizontal red line in each group, remains the same as that of extracted control RNA, but the intercellular variability becomes more apparent.