Evaluation of Advantages of Lithium Chloride as a Precipitating Agent in RNA Isolation from Frozen Vein Segments.

Contamination of the sample with DNA is a problem when isolating RNA by phenol-chloroform extraction, and DNase treatment introduces an additional error in the analysis of gene expression. Bearing in mind the ability of LiCl to precipitate RNA selectively, we studied the possibility and advantage of using LiCl as a precipitation agent in the protocol for RNA precipitation [3] from frozen segments of large vessels. Combined use of LiCl with isopropanol as precipitating agents (optimal ratio 2.5 M and 40%, respectively) significantly eliminates negative effects of using this salt (inhibition of reverse transcription and low RNA yield).