Dynamics of passenger strands in contact-inhibited MEFs. (A) Examples of fits for passenger strands and corresponding guide strands (left and right, respectively). Single- and biexponential fits are indicated (red and blue lines, respectively) with corresponding R2 values. (B) Half-life distributions for guide and passenger strands (orange and teal, respectively) obtained using either the single-exponential (single exp.) or biexponential (biexp.) fitting methods (box, quartiles; whiskers, at most 1.5 times the inter-quartile range). The major half-life was the one that corresponded to the majority of the specified strand (i.e., for the passenger strand, the molecules not incorporated into the mature silencing complex, and for the guide strand, the molecules incorporated into the mature complex), whereas the minor half-life was the one that corresponded to the minority of the specified strand. P values (two-sample t-test) are shown for the indicated comparisons.
