Abstract
We designed a universal primer set for quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) based on the nucleotide sequences of several fish β-actin genes for counting cell number in small amounts of fish tissue. We also evaluated primer reactivity using several established fish cell lines and blood cells from diverse fish species. A strong correlation was observed between cell numbers and Ct values among olive flounder, sevenband grouper, rock bream, rock fish, rainbow trout and fish cell lines (FHM, EPC, SSN-1, BF-2 and GF), suggesting that cell number can be counted by qPCR assay using the universal primers for a wide range of fish species.
