I use qiagen kits for total RNA extraction (RNeasy kit) and microRNA extraction (miRNeasy kit) from cells or tissues. Good luck.

Depends on the RNA size cut-off of the mini-columns, avoid those with a cut-off

Hi,

I agree with Maryam Tahmasebi and Armaz Aschrafi, you can use trizol reagent. You will obtain a good miR quality and you can check it with the agilent bioanalyzer. After miR quality control, you can also purify on spin column.

I have used both Trizol as well as Qiagen miRNeasy kits for cells and tissues. Both are ok if you have a decent amount of starting material. When dealing with very little amount of cells I use GlycoBlue to help spotting a tiny pellet or use the Qiagen kit. Also, the kit would reduce the variability in the extraction process.

Hi Anna, the GlycoBlue is a handy tools to utilise. May I ask you, have you ever isolated miRs from blood, if yes which kits worked for you? Cheers.

Armaz, I have never extracted RNA from whole blood, but I think I would use Trizol LS for that. There are number of reasons for not looking at whole blood, one of them is a huge amount of RBC and WBC. If you are interested in the miRNA population in blood cells I would purify them first. I isolated RNA from serum or plasma. I used miRVANA Paris kit for that or traditional phenol-cholroform extraction. If you are interested in that have a look at Methods section of our recent paper: http://www.plosntds.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pntd.0002701

Hope it helps.