RNeasy Mini Kit from Qiagen

RNA isolation is a basic and important procedure performed in all laboratories involved in molecular biology research. Good quality RNA is essential for performing important downstream applications such as qualitative and quantitative RT-PCR and microarray analysis. There are several kits and reagents available in the market for isolation and purification of RNA.

The RNeasy Mini Kit for isolation of total RNA from Qiagen is a very convenient kit for isolation of good quality RNA in a relatively short time. The kit comes with all the required reagents for the purification including the columns, collection tubes, buffers and even RNase-free water. All these reagents can be conveniently stored at room temperature and the reagents are stable for 9 months. An additional advantage of this kit is that it can be used to isolate total RNA from a variety of specimen types, including animal cells, animal and plant tissues, yeast and fungi. Further, the handbook that comes with the kit is exhaustive and very informative. Besides giving the protocols for isolation, it also gives information on the amount of required starting material for various tissues as well as procedures for storage, quantification and determination of RNA quality for the isolated RNA.

We have used the RNeasy Mini Kit in our laboratory for nearly 10 years and have had excellent results. We were able to isolate RNA from animal cell lines including those infected with viruses. It is interesting that although the kit doesn’t have protocol for viral RNA, we were able to obtain viral RNA from animal cells infected with adenovirus Ad-36. We have also used the kit to isolate total RNA from umbilical cord-derived human hematopoietic stem cells as well as from neural stem cells derived from fetal human brains.

The most attractive feature of this kit is the short time in which good quality RNA can be isolated. The procedure is very simple and involves binding of the RNA from the tissue homogenates to columns supplied in the kit. Once the RNA is bound, the column is washed a few times with the buffers provided and using high speed centrifugation; high quality RNA is subsequently eluted with RNase-free water. An additional advantage of this kit is that it allows parallel processing of multiple samples in a short time. We have been able to process up to 24 samples at a time without compromising the quality.

In summary, the RNeasy Mini Kit is a very easy and convenient kit for isolation of total RNA from a variety of cells and tissues. It would particularly be beneficial to labs that need to isolate RNA from several samples simultaneously.