Patent ID: 7919247

Claim:
A method for assessing mitochondrial toxicity of a compound in a living cell from a host, the method comprising: contacting a living cell from a host with a compound; recovering nucleic acids from the living host cell; contacting the nucleic acids with an amplification reaction mixture, wherein the reaction mixture comprises a first primer set, comprising the primers of SEQ ID No. 19 and SEQ ID No. 20, and a first probe that provides a first detectable signal upon amplification of a host mitochondrial nucleic acid; a second primer set, comprising the primers of SEQ ID No. 1 and SEQ ID No. 2, and a second probe that provides a second detectable signal upon amplification of a host nuclear nucleic acid; amplifying the host mitochondrial nucleic acid and host nuclear nucleic acid by RT-PCR; and normalizing the first detectable signal to the second detectable signal and comparing the normalized first detectable signal from the living host cell that has been treated with the compound to a normalized first detectable signal from a control host cell that has not been treated with the compound, in order to assess the mitochondrial toxicity of the compound in the living host cell.