Isolation of Messenger RNA from Plant Tissues

The starting material for any representative plant cDNA library is a supply of good-quality messenger RNA from the plant tissue of choice. Extraction of RNA can be made from several grams of tissue or as little as 50 mg. However, large samples are generally more representative of the genes expressed in a population of plants in response to environmental cues or at a defined stage of development. Therefore, large-scale extraction of RNA is the method of choice for preparations to be used for cDNA libraries.