title: A simple and efficient method for isolating small RNAs from different plant species.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Small RNAs emerged over the last decade as key regulators in diverse biological processes in eukaryotic organisms. To identify and study small RNAs, good and efficient protocols are necessary to isolate them, which sometimes may be challenging due to the composition of specific tissues of certain plant species. Here we describe a simple and efficient method to isolate small RNAs from different plant species.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We developed a simple and efficient method to isolate small RNAs from different plant species by first comparing different total RNA extraction protocols, followed by streamlining the best one, finally resulting in a small RNA extraction method that has no need of first total RNA extraction and is not based on the commercially available TRIzol® Reagent or columns. This small RNA extraction method not only works well for plant tissues with high polysaccharide content, like cactus, agave, banana, and tomato, but also for plant species like Arabidopsis or tobacco. Furthermore, the obtained small RNA samples were successfully used in northern blot assays.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Here we provide a simple and efficient method to isolate small RNAs from different plant species, such as cactus, agave, banana, tomato, Arabidopsis, and tobacco, and the small RNAs from this simplified and low cost method is suitable for downstream handling like northern blot assays.
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio Nacional de Genómica para la Biodiversidad (LANGEBIO), CINVESTAV-IPN, Km, 9,6 Libramiento Norte, Carretera Irapuato-León, CP 36821 Irapuato, Guanajuato, México. sdfolter@ira.cinvestav.mx.
authors.forename: Flor de Fátima
authors.initials: Fde F
authors.lastname: Rosas-Cárdenas
authors.forename: Noé
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Durán-Figueroa
authors.forename: Jean-Philippe
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Vielle-Calzada
authors.forename: Andrés
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cruz-Hernández
authors.forename: Nayelli
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Marsch-Martínez
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: de Folter