Figure 4

Effects of varying the oligonucleotide length. The negative (or absolute value) of the slope in the resolving power curve is shown as a function of oligonucleotide length for C. elegans (solid colour bars) and human (hashed bars). (A) Effects of varying the oligonucleotide length between 50 and 70 before (red bars) and after (green bars) the use of our standard filters, see Methods for details. For the so-called isothermal design the length of each oligonucleotide was allowed to vary between 50 and 70 in an attempt to minimize the width to the melting temperature distribution. (B) Effects of varying the oligonucleotide length between 50 and 70 for a fixed melting temperature of 72°C without applying additional constraints on oligonucleotides.