Advancing DNA research safely and securely

Jeremy Garson (UCL Centre for Virology) and Jim Huggett (UCL Centre for Infectious Diseases and International Health) have been at the heart of developing a new set of guidelines on the way scientists the world over use qPCR - a technology crucial to forensic analysis and diagnosing diseases. Below Huggett explains how and why they went about it. What is qPCR?. qPCR stands for real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. It enables scientists to measure accurately the amount of any particular DNA sequence in a biological sample. The PCR method (in its many guises) is arguably one of the most fundamental technologies for biological and medical research available today. What is this method used for?.