A comparison of commercially-available automated and manual extraction kits for the isolation of total RNA from small tissue samples

Abstract

Each kit was generally capable of extracting the amount of RNA required for most downstream gene expression applications suggesting that RNA yield is unlikely to be a limiting factor for any of the kits evaluated. However, differences in the quality of RNA extracted via each of the kits indicate that these kits may differ in their ability to yield RNA acceptable for some applications. Overall, the findings of this study demonstrate that there are practical differences between commercially available RNA extraction kits that should be taken into account when selecting extraction methods to be used for isolating RNA designated for gene expression analysis.