qPCR was performed using StepOne Thermocycler (Applied Biosystems), by Fast ramp speed programme using Luna® Universal qPCR Master Mix (New England Bio Labs Inc.), and 1 µl of magnum cDNA for the reaction. Thermal cycling conditions were initial denaturation 1 min at 95°C, then 40 cycles of denaturation for 3 s at 95°C and annealing 30 s at 60°C. Each sample was run in triplicate.
Data analysis was conducted using four software: geNorm, NormFinder, BestKeeper and RefFinder (Andersen et al., 2004 (link); Pfaffl et al., 2004 (link); Vandesompele et al., 2002 (link); Xie et al., 2012 ).