Improved method of RNA isolation from laser capture microdissection (LCM)-derived plant tissues

Abstract

Laser capture microdissection (LCM) is a tool to isolate desired and/or less accessible cells or tissues from a heterogeneous population. In the current method, we describe an efficient and cost-effective method to obtain both high-quality mRNA and miRNAs in sufficient quantity from LCM-derived plant tissues. The quality of the isolated RNA can be assessed using Bioanalyzer. Using modified stem-loop RT-PCR, we confirmed the presence of 21–24 nucleotide (nt) long mature miRNAs. This modified LCM-based method has been found to be suitable for the tissue-specific expression analysis of both genes and small RNAs (miRNAs).