Hi,
I am finding a difficulty to quantitate (through 2% agarose gel) the RNA isolated from normal blood plasma. I wanted to know the concentration of RNA in blood plasma of a normal individual. Which protocol (Reagent) will give me the best results? which way would be best to quantitate it?
Thanks
Sarah
RNA in blood plasma is usually present in very low amounts ranging between 1-10ng/ml and is highly susceptible to degradation by RNases. In addition, most of the RNA in plasma is cell-free RNA (cfRNA), which is often fragmented and lacks clear rRNA bands seen in cellular RNA. This makes quantitation on a 2% agarose gel challenging, as you may not see distinct RNA bands. The best approaches involve Extraction of RNA using a high-sensitivity kit (e.g., Qiagen miRNeasy, TRIzol LS + column cleanup followed with sensitive quantitation methods like fluorometric assays or qRT-PCR rather than gel electrophoresis.