Plant & Animal Genome VI Conference

W97

THE KEY TO ACCELERATING MOLECULAR STUDIES IN PLANTS: NOVEL TECHNOLOGIES FOR FAST, RELIABLE NUCLEIC ACID ISOLATION

QIAGEN GmbH, 40724 Hilden, Germany

The utility of nucleic acid-based techniques in plant research and breeding greatly depends on having fast and efficient methods for the isolation of high-quality DNA or RNA. With conventional isolation methods, plant metabolites may copurify with nucleic acids and their complete removal is often laborious and time consuming. Such impurities lead to inconsistent results by inhibiting enzymatic reactions or by interfering with UV absorbance or electrophoretic mobility. The DNeasy and RNeasy technologies for DNA and RNA isolation from plants overcome the limitations of conventional methods. These technologies eliminate organic extraction and alcohol precipitation steps and can be completed in 30-60 min. They take advantage of the selective binding properties of silica-gel membranes in the presence of high concentrations of chaotropic salt. With these novel technologies, high-quality nucleic acids are obtained from a wide variety of plant species and tissues, including troublesome sources rich in polysaccharides and polyphenolics. The quality of DNeasy and RNeasy purified nucleic acids is demonstrated in common downstream applications like transgene screening, pathogen diagnostics, or gene expression analysis. An outlook for high-throughput nucleic acid isolation and purification procedures will be given.