Identification of false-positive CBF beta/MYH11 RT-PCR results

Persistent problems with false positive results were encountered when carry ing out a published RT-PCR method to detect the CBF beta/MYH11 transcripts associated with the inv(16)(p13q22) cytogenetic abnormality in acute myeloi d leukaemia. These were shown to be due to amplification of part of the int ronic MYH11 sequence, presumably from very small amounts of contaminating D NA or unspliced primary RNA transcripts, amplified because of partial homol ogy of the CBF beta 3 primer to intronic MYH11 sequence.