The SMRI RNA samples were treated with DNase I using the RNase-Free DNase Set (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany), and clean-up was then performed using the RNeasy MinElute Cleanup Kit (Qiagen). First-strand complementary DNA for use in the real-time quantitative PCR was synthesized with the SuperScriptIII First-Strand synthesis system for quantitative reverse transcriptase-PCR (Life Technologies) with 100 ng purified total RNA according to the manufacturer's protocol and diluted properly with diethylpyrocarbonate-treated H2O before the experiments.
