Novel Dual Labeled Fluorescence Probe Based Assay to Measure the Telomere Length

ABSTRACT Telomeres are highly repetitive regions capping the chromosomes and composed of multiple units of hexa-nucleotides, TTAGGG, making their quantification difficult. Most of the methods developed to estimate telomeres are extensively cumbersome and expensive. The quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) based assay is relatively easy and cheaper method that applies SyBr Green dye chemistry to measure telomere length. As SyBr Green dye fluoresces after intercalation into the dsDNA, lack of differentiation between specific PCR target products and unspecific products is a limitation and it affects accuracy in quantitation of telomeres. To overcome the limitations of SyBr Green, we developed a dual labeled fluorescence probe based quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to measure the telomere length. This robust, accurate and highly reproducible (R 2 =0.96) proprietary method (patent pending), yet cost effective and easy, utilizes a probe that targets specifically the telomeric DNA.