Aspects of design and statistical analysis in the Comet assay

Some aspects of the statistical design and analysis of the Comet (single cell gel electrophoresis) assay have been evaluated by means of a simulation study. The tail length and tail moment were selected for the quantification of DNA migration. Results from the simulation study showed that the choice of measure to summarize the cells on each slide is extremely important in order to facilitate an efficient analysis. For tail moment, the mean of log transformed data is clearly superior to the other evaluated measures, whereas using the mean of raw data without transformation can lead to very inefficient analyses. The 90th percentile, capturing the upper tail of the distribution, performs well for the tail length, with a slight improvement obtained by applying a log transformation prior to calculations. Furthermore, the simulation study has been used to assess the appropriateness of some models for statistical analysis and to address the issue of design (i.e. number of cultures or animals in each group, number of slides per animal/culture and number of cells scored per slide). Combining the results from the simulations with practical experience from the pharmaceutical industry, we conclude the paper by providing concise recommendations regarding the design and statistical analysis in the Comet assay.