Newly Revised Quantitative PCR-Based Assay for Mitochondrial and Nuclear DNA Damage

Given the crucial role of DNA damage in human health and disease, it is important to be able to accurately measure both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA damage. This article describes a method based on a long-amplicon quantitative PCR–based assay that does not require a separate mitochondrial isolation step, which can often be labor-intensive and generate artifacts. The detailed basic protocol presented here is newly revised, with particular attention to application in Homo sapiens, Rattus norvegicus, and Caenorhabditis elegans resulting from changes in availability of PCR reagents. Optimized extraction support protocols are also described for high-quality DNA from multiple rat tissues for which these procedures had not previously been described. © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.