I would like to extract total RNA (including microRNAs) from frozen human skin biopsies embedded in Tissue-Tek (OCT Compound), but the literature is pretty scarce when it comes to this combination. The only paper that can lend me any hand is attached to this topic. Does anybody here have any experience with this?
We did this by using a cryotome. Cut 5 to 20 micrometer sections, shuffle them in a cooled eppendorf tube, keep in liquid nitrogen or on dry ice. then add your choice of phenol-based extraction reagent. Currently, we use Qiazol from Qiagen.
By sectioning you basically do the grinding part of the extraction process. Once you add the Qiazol, the section will immediately disintegrate due to their thinness. The tissuetek will most likely stay in the phenol, I think. Not sure about that. We could cut away as much tissuetek in the cryotome as possible to basically have very little "contamination" with it in your extraction solution.
Hope this helps!
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