qPCR, dPCR, NGS – A journey

Scientific conferences fulfil many roles, but one of the most mportant ones is that they help shape the direction in which a scintific discipline grows by promoting person-to-person exchanges f information, ideas and constructive criticisms between scientists rom different backgrounds. This interaction also helps to idenify areas of controversy and promotes efforts to address and, it is oped, resolve them. This year is the 30th anniversary of the pubication of the first practical description of the polymerase chain eaction [1], arguably one of the simplest and the most widely used olecular technology. It also sees the 7th instalment of the Freisng PCR meetings (http://www.qpcr-ngs-2015.net/), which are the ongest established, continuous and most influential conferences in his field and have provided a looking glass for conceptual and techical innovation as well as practical applications of PCR-associated ethods. The first of this conference series took place in March 2004, propitious time for such a conference, eleven years after Russ iguchi published his paper describing the use of real-time quanitative PCR (qPCR) [2] and nine years after the publication of olecular beacons [3] and a 5′ hydrolysis-based qPCR assay [4]. he meeting was organised, as it still is, by Michael Pfaffl, one of he founding editors of Biomolecular Detection and Quantification BDQ). Michael had dabbled with competitive reverse transcription RT)-PCR, preparing synthetic competitive templates and detecing PCR amplification products using HPLC-UV to quantify IGF-1 RNA levels in bovines [5]. But in 2001 he published his seminal new mathematical model for relative quantification in real-time T-PCR” [6], which has been cited over 14,000 times in the peereviewed literature. This was followed by another highly cited ublication, which introduced the relative expression software tool REST) for group-wise comparison and statistical analysis of relaive expression results in qPCR [7]. Meanwhile another founding ditor of BDQ had long since established his reputation as one of he foremost innovators and though leaders in the field. Carl Witwer described a new type of thermal cycler that was based on eat transfer with air to samples in sealed capillary tubes, simlar to a “recirculating hair dryer” [8]. He followed this up with