Recombinant plasmid pAHV-1 concentration was determined by taking the absorbance at 260 nm using a Smartspec 3000 spectrophotometer (Bio-Rad Corp., Hercules, CA) and purity was confirmed using the 260/280 nm ratio. Through its molecular weight, pAHV-1 copy number was then calculated and the purified pAHV-1 plasmid DNA was then serially diluted 10-fold in TE buffer, pH 8.0, from 1.0 × 10 9 to 1.0 × 10 2 plasmid copies/ μL. These dilutions were tested in triplicate and used as quantitation standards to construct the standard curve by plotting the plasmid copy number logarithm against the measured CT values. The Bio-Rad iCycler IQ detection software created the standard curve, calculated the correlation coefficient (R 2 ) of the standard curve, standard deviations of triplicates.