Quantitative PCR.

Quantitative PCR (qPCR) was performed on a 7600HT Fast Real-Time PCR System (Applied Biosystems), using TaqMan Universal PCR Master Mix and commercially purchased TaqMan probes (Applied Biosystems). The thermocycler program was as follows: 95_C for 5 min, followed by 40 cycles of 15 s at 95_C, and 1 min at 60_ C. Each sample was run in duplicate, and the data analyzed using 2_DDct method (Livak and Schmittgen, 2001) with b2-microglobulin (B2M) as the reference gene. Information on all Taqman probes can be found in Table 4.