RNA extraction from developing or mature wheat seeds

Abstract

Cereal grains, as storage tissues of the plant, contain high amounts of starch. Purification of RNA from plant tissue especially from seed tissue can be challenging due to this high starch content. Starch coprecipitates with RNA in the presence of isopropanol or ethanol and can interfere with the extraction process and downstream reactions. Thus the removal of starch by using appropriate methods is necessary for obtaining pure RNA to be processed for functional genomics analysis. We describe a method to isolate large amount of good-quality RNA from developing and mature wheat grain which can also be adapted to other cereal grains. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media, New York.