Fig 3. Effects of ambient storage length on salivary microbial growth.

Primers for human 18S and bacterial 16S were tested on RNA from OE33 cells and DH5α bacteria respectively (n = 6). (A) Three pools of saliva collected in RNAlater were created from nine volunteers and RT-PCR was performed using human 18S and bacterial 16S primers to give raw Ct scores that are inversely proportional to expression. (B) Bacterial 16S values are shown as squares and human 18S primers are shown as circles. A one-way ANOVA and Tukey test were performed, statistical significance between days can be found in S1 and S2 Tables. The error bars represent SD.