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Review
. 2023 Jan 20;24(3):2120.
doi: 10.3390/ijms24032120.

RNA Extraction from Cartilage: Issues, Methods, Tips

Stefania Pagani  1 , Melania Maglio  1 , Laura Sicuro  2 , Milena Fini  3 , Gianluca Giavaresi  1 , Silvia Brogini  1
Affiliations
Review

RNA Extraction from Cartilage: Issues, Methods, Tips

Stefania Pagani et al. Int J Mol Sci. .

Abstract

The increase in degenerative diseases involving articular cartilage has pushed research to focus on their pathogenesis and treatment, exploiting increasingly complex techniques. Gene expression analyses from tissue are representative of the in vivo situation, but the protocols to be applied to obtain a reliable analysis are not completely cleared through customs. Thus, RNA extraction from fresh samples and specifically from musculoskeletal tissue such as cartilage is still a challenging issue. The aim of the review is to provide an overview of the techniques described in the literature for RNA extraction, highlighting limits and possibilities. The research retrieved 65 papers suitable for the purposes. The results highlighted the great difficulty in comparing the different studies, both for the sources of tissue used and for the techniques employed, as well as the details about protocols. Few papers compared different RNA extraction methods or homogenization techniques; the case study reported by authors about RNA extraction from sheep cartilage has not found an analog in the literature, confirming the existence of a relevant blank on studies about RNA extraction from cartilage tissue. However, the state of the art depicted can be used as a starting point to improve and expand studies on this topic.

Keywords: RNA; cartilage; extraction methods; fresh tissue.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flowchart of the main steps of RNA extraction.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Protocol of RNA isolation by Chomczynski et al. [65].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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