I have a set of frozen mammalian brain and lung samples which I need to screen for RNA viruses. I have seen some protocols e.g. mag max core kit (MagMAX™ CORE Nucleic Acid Purification Kit Catalog number: A32702) which seems to suggest disruption of tissue before adding lysis buffer. But this seems wrong to me - won't the viral RNA be degraded? My samples were directly frozen and not in any preservative like RNAlater and such.
I have to send half of each of my samples to a collaborator and I don't have duplicates. So I need to stop at the tissue homogenate step, split samples and and freeze at -80 to ship them.
Wondering if anyone has experience with tissue homogenisation without lysis buffer when testing for RNA virus? And storing samples before actual extraction?
Thanks very much!