rna thawing - (Jan/27/2014 )

rna thawing - i need to thaw my rna samples to chack concentrations, can i thaw them on ice. how long?  i have 24 samples.. should i do in smaller batches. can i carry them together to the spectrophotometer? or how to carry out this simple procedure of extracting part of sample from -80 and carrying 24 samples to spectrometer to calculate which is seeming complicated due to the rna degradation sensitivity.  please advice.

Thawing on ice sounds fine, but how long does the procedure take per sample ?

once liquid i will take 5 microl out and refreeze the rest. so the time taken with respect to original stock samples is just the time it takes to melt. the extracted 5 microl's one microl will be taken for concentration check on spec.   

Shouldn't be anything to worry about if the time is so short. I'd suggest you can thaw them all at once, quickly take the 5ul out of each tube and take them to the spectrometer on ice.

I usually thaw the ice of samples by spining while the door of spin is open.

Spin like this one:

http://img.directindustry.com/images_di/photo-g/bench-top-centrifuges-60010-2465121.jpg

or you can put vials on a rack like this one. Once there is a small piece of ice, I put it on ice.

http://www.tedpella.com/beakers_html/20831-1-16-20.jpg