Fig. 1. STAR assay workflow.
(A) Schematic overview of the STAR assay workflow. Different copies of synthetic telomere repeat sequences are used to generate a standard curve that allows the assay to measure absolute telomere length. By diluting the samples sufficiently, single telomere molecules can be isolated in individual compartments. Different Ct values in each sample will correspond to different telomere lengths. (B) Actual fluorescence (EvaGreen) images of a telomere standard and cell line sample at cycle 27. Telomere standard has uniform fluorescence for all the compartments, while the cell line sample has varying fluorescence intensities among the compartments with some compartments with no fluorescence. (C) Comparison of STAR assay with other common telomere length measurement methods. STAR assay is capable of measuring telomere length distributions with high throughput.