Descriptive statistics of the fourteen candidate reference genes based on their cycle threshold (Ct) values as calculated by BestKeeper.

n: number of samples; [Ct]: cycle threshold; Geo Mean [Ct]: geometric mean of Ct value; ar Mean [Ct]: arithmetic mean of Ct value; Min and Max [Ct]: extreme values of Ct; Min and Max [x-fold]: extreme values of expression levels expressed as absolute x-fold over, or under, coefficient; Std dev [±x-fold]: standard deviation of the absolute regulation coefficients; SD [±Ct]: standard deviation of Ct value; CV [%Ct]: coefficient of variation expressed as the percentage of the Ct value. The correlation between each candidate reference gene and the BestKeeper index was calculated using the Pearson correlation coefficient [r] and the p-value [60]. The data used in evaluating the stability of reference genes are indicated in bold.