Ectopic (Illegitimate) Transcription: New Possibilities for the Analysis and Diagnosis of Human Genetic Disease

Abstract
By means of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), ectopic or illegitimate transcripts from any gene may be amplified from any tissue or cell type. RNA transcript analysis is therefore no longer dependent upon possession of the often inaccessible expressing tissue. We review here the applications of ectopic transcript analysis to mutation detection and characterization, analysis of RNA splicing and the study of the genotype-phenotype relationship.