Figure 4.

The influence of duration of dehydration of the slides prior to staining on the detection of DNA damage. HaCaTs were irradiated with UVB, and the alkaline comet assay (ACA) then performed until the end of neutralization step. At this point, and before the staining, two replicates from each treatment were dried for 1, 2, 3 h, and overnight, or not dried. Tukey box and whisker plot of median and IQR of two independent experiments, 100 determinations per treatment per experiment. (ns = not significant, ** represents p < 0.01, determined by the Mann–Whitney test.) Also shown are representative comet images of cells treated with 0.35 J/cm² and dried for the indicated periods of time (inset images).