Exclusive Amplification of cDNA Template (EXACT) RT-PCR to Avoid Amplifying Contaminating Genomic Pseudogenes

Genomic DNA contamination within RNA samples has important implications for RT-PCR, particularly if there is a pseudogene related to the gene under investigation, because amplification from pseudogenes and reverse-transcribed cDNA can be very difficult to distinguish. Methods to remove DNA contamination cannot guarantee the absolute absence of DNA from the sample without a loss of RNA quantity or quality, which can be crucial for small amounts of RNA or for the investigation of transcripts with a low level of expression. Here, we describe a general technique for RT-PCR that applies a sequence to the 5′ tail of reverse-transcribed cDNA that is not present in genomic DNA and uses this for annealing the reverse PCR primer to exclude genomic DNA amplification in unmodified RNA samples.