[1] They were devised after a paper was published in 2002 that claimed to detect measles virus in children with autism through the use of RT-qPCR, but the results proved to be completely unreproducible by other scientists.
This incident prompted Stephen Bustin to create the MIQE guidelines to provide a baseline level of quality for qPCR data published in scientific literature.
[2] The MIQE guidelines were created due to the low quality of qPCR data submitted to academic journals at the time, which was only becoming more common as Next Generation Sequencing machinery allowed for such experiments to be run for a cheaper cost.
To help improve overall quality, the MIQE guidelines were made as generalized suggestions on basic experimental procedures and forms of data that should be collected as a minimum level of reported information for other researchers to understand and use when reading the published material.
[3] In 2009, Stephen Bustin led an international group of scientists including Mikael Kubista to put together a set of guidelines on how to perform qPCR and what forms of data should be collected and published in the process.
[2][10] However, some researchers have pointed out at least some success, with a number of papers being rejected by academic journals for publication due to failing to pass MIQE checklists.
Other studies have been retracted after the fact once their lack of proper data to pass the MIQE guidelines was noted and publicly pointed out to the journal editors.
[12] Other scientific instrument companies have assisted in guideline compliance by purposefully tailoring their devices for them, including Bio-Rad creating a mobile app that allows for active marking of the MIQE checklist as each step is completed.
[14] In August 2020, an updated version of the guidelines for the digital PCR method was published to account for improvement in machinery, technologies, and techniques since the original 2013 release.
The only additional desired pieces of information are the chemical composition of the buffer used, who manufactured the plates and tubes used and what their catalog number is, and whether the reaction was set up manually or by a machine.
This includes explaining the specific method of checking that the process functioned, such as using a gel, direct sequencing of the genetic material, showing a melt profile, or from digestion by restriction enzyme.