Isolation of RNA Viruses from Biological Materials

The successful extraction of viral RNA from biological material requires rapid transport and adequate storage of samples because of the unstable nature of RNA. Samples should be received and processed within 6 h and the relevant fractions stored at −70�C until testing. Also, it is difficult to ascertain the efficiency of sample preparation methods; therefore, known standards should be processed alongside samples to assess the loss within the system (1 ), particularly for quantitative applications.