Inhibition
On average inhibition caused qPCR reactions to be delayed with 1.05 cycle. In 17% of the reactions performed the qPCR was delayed for more than 2 cycles. We found that qPCR reactions with 33 template DNA molecules were 3.3 times more often inhibited for more than 2 cycles than qPCR reactions with 3333 template DNA molecules. However, inhibition was not significantly stronger at low DNA concentration (slope of regression did not differ from 1 T=-0.2081434, df=21, p>0.4 ). The model that best supported the data did not include pH or OM as factors. Therefore, we assumed that the low levels of inhibition would affect all treatments equally.