Hi Letizia

• i have not done this but I see no reason why a Qiagen gel extraction. buffer (for agarose gel PCR products) to dissolve the gelatin sample coupled to an RNEasy column RNA extraction protocol would not work
• Alternatively if you put the gelatin sample into a 0.5ml tube containing glass wool with a hole punched in the bottom ysing a hypodermic needle
• Then put this tube into a 1.5ml eppendorf and spin for 15 min at 13.000 rpm in a microfuge
• Take the Eluate resident in the bottom of the larger 1.5ml tube and subject to RNEasy column purification

Personally I wouldn't recommend the process described above by Laurence. There are two methods that my colleagues have indicated work well.

1. Article Extraction of RNA from single frozen sections

2. Article RNA Extraction from Tissue Sections

Thanks Zachery. This was simply an educated guess on my part but if validated protocols exist then I would be the first to concede that following them is probably better

I happen to think based on years of experience that my protocol could in principle work but I would worry about recovery compared to an optimised protocol

I agree Laurence, and in fact the protocols I posted essentially rely on a similar principle to the one you proposed. My only concern was that the use of glass wool etc. may introduce RNase contamination, especially in the hands of someone who may be new at handling RNA. Cheers!