alongside Stephen Bustin using the MIQE guidelines for clinical biomarkers in December 2020 in order to identify the clinical presence of COVID-19 viral particles during the COVID-19 pandemic. Guidelines overview The MIQE guidelines are split up into 9 different sections that make up the checklist. These include not only considerations for doing the qPCR itself, but also how the resulting data is collected, analyzed, and presented. An important part of the latter is including information relating to the analysis software used and also submitting the raw data to the relevant databases. Experimental design Large portions of the guidelines include basic actions that would normally be included in experiments and publications regardless, such as an item for describing the experimental and control group differences. Other such information includes how many individual units are used in each group in the experiment. These two pieces are defined as essential for any study. This section also includes two desirable points, which are pointing out whether the author's laboratory itself or a core laboratory of the university or organization conducted the qPCR assay and an acknowledgement of any other individuals that contributed to the work. Sample The essential requirements that samples and sample material must meet includes a description of the sample, what form of dissection was used, what processing method was done, whether the samples were frozen or fixed and how long did it take, and what sample conditions were used. It is also desirable to know the volume or mass of the sample that was processed for the qPCR. Nucleic acid extraction For the process of extracting the DNA/RNA, there are a number of essential guidelines. This includes a description of the extraction process done, a statement on what DNA extraction kit was used and any changes made to the directions, details on whether any DNase or RNase treatment was used, a statement on whether any contamination was assessed, a quantification of the amount of genetic material extracted, a description of the instruments used for the extraction, the methods used to retain RNA integrity, a statement on the RNA integrity number and quality indicator and the quantification cycle (Cq) reached, and lastly what testing was done to determine the presence or absence of inhibitors. Four desired pieces of information are where the reagents used were obtained from, what level of genetic purity was obtained, what yield was obtained, and an electrophoresis gel image