Thermo Fisher Scientific is sponsoring a webinar entitled 'The Future of qPCR: Best Practices, Standardisation and the MIQE Guidelines', which will take place on 30 September 2010.
The webinar, hosted by Science/AAAS, will feature an expert panel discussing the important role qPCR plays in research and molecular laboratories, as well as some of the technical challenges associated with it.
Most of these limitations can be addressed with standardised best practices, many of which are outlined in the recently published 'Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments (MIQE)' guidelines.
Two key authors of the MIQE guidelines, Stephen Bustin and Greg Shipley, along with Manju Sethi, product and instrumentation specialist at Thermo Fisher, will be the featured panellists.
Each panellist will present on the topic of qPCR and then invite participants to join a live QandA session.
The presentations will provide an overview of the MIQE guidelines and qPCR applications, along with the primary challenges of qPCR and best practices to receive optimal performance from the technique.
Particular focus during the webinar will be given to MIQE-friendly products, such as the Thermo Scientific Nanodrop UV-Vis spectrophotometer and the Thermo Scientific Solaris qPCR assays, specifically referenced in the guidelines.
For example, the guidelines stipulate that template quantification is 'essential' and an assessment of purity using spectrophotometry is 'desirable'.
The microvolume capability of a Thermo Scientific Nanodrop UV-Vis spectrophotometer enables rapid and easy purity assessment and range of concentration measurement (2-15,000ng/uL for dsDNA) without the need for cuvettes or any containment device.
Known probe sequences are also categorized as 'desirable' in the guidelines.
The Thermo Scientific Solaris qPCR assays facilitate this requirement with its automatic inclusion of probe and primer sequence information with every assay.
