IRF8 and myeloproliferative disorder: For example, mutations in the human IRF1 gene has been linked to myeloid leukemia (Willman et al. 1993); deletion of the IRF8 gene causes a CML-like disease in mice (Holtschke et al. 1996), while in humans expression of IRF8 was depressed (Schmidt et al. 1998), and in CML patients having the BCR-ABL oncogene re-expression of IRF8 suppressed the myelo-proliferative disorder (Hao and Ren, 2000).