We examined the centrifuged platelets with transmission electron microscopy and confirmed that majority of cells, if not all, were platelets (data now shown due to a discrepancy of donor samples used for the study).
In addition to the set of donor samples used in our initial transcriptome analysis (Iowa set), we analyzed a validation cohort of RPE-choroid samples collected from both normal eyes and eyes with a clinical diagnosis of AMD obtained from the Lions Eye Bank of Oregon.
Bisulphite conversion was carried out on fcDNA donor sample 5 using the Epitect kit (Qiagen).
The levels of IL-6, GRO-γ, RANTES and leptin were determined in patient and healthy donor plasma samples using immunometric sandwich ELISA (R and D systems, Abington, UK (IL-6, RANTES, leptin) or Acris Antibodies Ltd, Germany (GRO-γ).
The SCFA are produced from the carbohydrates from the pericarp powders or the wine matrix through the action of the faecal microbiota and from the carbohydrate residue from the dietary fibre intake of the donors in the faecal samples used in the suspension.
The authors would like to thank all the donors of samples used in this study and Houssein Khodjet el Khil of the Genetics Laboratory, Tunis Institute of Medical Technologies, for help with the extended genotyping of North African populations beyond Morocco.
Despite the comments made at the time, it was neither wicked nor tacky when Craig Venter, shortly after the first human genome sequence was published in 2001, publicly revealed that he was one donor of the samples used in Celera's genome sequencing project [ 1].
Gene expression ratio of different samples for each donor was inferred using the PFOLD algorithm [ 19] that employs a Bayesian estimation scheme for estimating the fold-change of gene expression and also the significance of the change (P-value).
Additionally twelve healthy donor samples were used in RT-PCR experiments.
All samples used in the study and information about the donors are listed in Additional file 1: Table S1.
