The isolation of nucleic acids from fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues-which methods are useful when?

ABSTRACT: Museums and pathology collections around the world represent an archive of genetic material to study populations and diseases. For preservation purposes, a large portion of these collections has been fixed in formalin-containing solutions, a treatment that results in cross-linking of biomolecules. Cross-linking not only complicates isolation of nucleic acid but also introduces polymerase "blocks" during PCR. A wide variety of methods exists for the recovery of DNA and RNA from archival tissues, and although a number of previous studies have qualitatively compared the relative merits of the different techniques, very few have undertaken wide scale quantitative comparisons. To help address this issue, we have undertaken a study that investigates the quality of nucleic acids recovered from a

SUBMITTER: Gilbert MT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1888728 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature