calibrator - what is this in qPCR (Dec/09/2009 )

Hi,

I have to check the expression of circulating mRNA in plasma of a gene of interest. I plan to do this using qPCR, relative quantification.

transplantation (2008), vol 68 (1). Someone has measured albumin plama RNA and the formula they used is deta CT (calibrator)-deltaCT(test sample). The calibrator referred to cell lines to adjust plate to plate variation . It further goesonto say that the relative amount of plasma RNA after normalization with calibrator and adjustment for plat to plate variation, presented the fold difference relative to the baseline. What doe sthis mean?

How do I determine the threshold Ct value?

sorry, teh questions may appear silly but I'm new to this and Im just confused.

You can refer to this website, it is a good intro to realtime PCR

http://pathmicro.med.sc.edu/pcr/realtime-home.htm

Chris