RNA storage at room temp? - (Sep/19/2008 )

Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone had any experience of storing extracted RNA at room temperature, or at 4 degrees? Can you use RNAlater to store extracted RNA?

I need to send some RNA to another city.
Any ideas are welcome!

cheers

No, you can not store RNA longer at room temperature or at 4 c. You probably can store in ethanol rather than RNAlater which stores cells before RNA.

Thanks for your reply,

I was wondering why is it that RNAlater is not recommended for storage of extracted RNA? If it keeps RNA intact in cells, why not outside them?

ALso, I read that formamide can be used to store RNA at room temp for several hours. Has anyone tried this?

thanks

I've never heard of anyone shipping total RNA.
My suggestions to you are to ether to ship the cells and extract there or do RTPCR.
The DNA/RNA hetroduplex is strong and might (all though I've never tried this my self) withstand the journey.

Can you not ship it in dry ice?
At the company I work at the moment, we've received RNA on dry ice before, and it is fine.

If that's not an option, I'd send it in ethanol but try to send on ice. or as molgen suggested, send cDNA.

Thanks for the replies.

Shipping on dry ice could be an option for me, depending on cost. Thanks for that, I'll look into it.

About why RNAlater is not recommended for storage of extracted RNA..... could it be that, when the tissue is intact, the RNAse activity that does still occur is fairly localised and doesn't degrade the entire sample, whereas if it is extracted, it would?

the best option for you is to send cDNA or cells and isolating RNA at the place where you want to work it with. and if you are very particular in sending RNA itself, then dry ice is the better choice.

There is a company (Biomatrica) that sells microtubes with a special matrix that preserve the nucleic acids at RT for long term storage.

You can send RNA sample at ambient temperatures after you have re-precipitated the RNA in AquaRNA solution to inactivate RNases.