dissolving of RNA

[Paul A Bucciaglia]

I missed the original post and did not catch which organism the RNA is 
being extracted from, but at least with plants another alternative exists 
besides over-drying the pellet--the RNA is contaminated with phenolics and 
carbohydrates.  And not just contaminated; often they are covalently 
linked to the nucleic acids.  There are publisshed protocols which can 
overcome this; if anyone is interested I'll post them.

Paul Bucciaglia




jerikse at bsd.meddean.luc.edu (Jason Eriksen) writes:

>xudong huang <xudong.huang at endo.mas.lu.se> wrote:

>>Hi, Frank:
>>
>>It is the problem of over-drying. To avoid it, just pipette away
>>remaining ETOH drops as much as you can, air-dry the pellet 5-10 min at
>>room temperature until you can not see ETOH drops, then add DEPC water.
>>It should be dissolved. Hope it helps.
>>
>>Xudong 

>This is excellent advice! I ran into the same problem when I was first
>learning RNA extractions; what most beginners do, unless they know
>better, is to really try to get that pellet dry.  Of course, what
>happens is that you get a firm, translucent, non-dissolving pellet of
>RNA. :)

>It took me a month of effort to figure out that this was the problem.
>Xudong is right on the money. Don't dry your pellet too much, and do
>avoid subjecting it to 65 C temperatures. Room temperature for drying
>is just fine.

>Jason