2.3. Selection of gene and primer design

Three reference genes (β-actin, gapdh and rpl8) and two genes involved in the antioxidant system (cat and sod) were evaluated in this work. The primers for qPCR were designed through the Integrated DNA Technologies page (https://www.idtdna.com/pages) from the following sequences published for Alligator mississippiensis: β-actin mRNA (GenBank: {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"DQ421415.1","term_id":"89574413","term_text":"DQ421415.1"}}DQ421415.1), gapdh mRNA (GenBank: {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"XM_006258364.3","term_id":"1113794805","term_text":"XM_006258364.3"}}XM_006258364.3), rpl8 mRNA (GenBank: {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"XM_006266675.3","term_id":"1113753797","term_text":"XM_006266675.3"}}XM_006266675.3) and cat mRNA (GenBank: {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"XM_006259972.3","term_id":"1113796127","term_text":"XM_006259972.3"}}XM_006259972.3). For the sod gene, we used primers reported by Sujiwattanarat et al. [30], for Crocodylus siamensis.