UPDATE 20170712: The RNA I isolated below is from incorrect regions of tissue. I misunderstood exactly what this tissue was, and admittedly, jumped the gun. The tissue is actually collected from the visceral mass – which contains gonad (a small amount) and digestive gland (a large amount). The RNA isolated below will be stored in one of the Shellfish RNA boxes and I will isolate RNA from the correct regions indicated by Grace

Isolated RNA from Olympia oyster gonad previously preserved with the PAXgene Tissue Fixative and Stabilizer and then embedded in paraffin blocks. See Laura’s notebook for full details on samples and preservation.

RNA was isolated from the following samples using the PAXgene Tissue RNA Kit (Qiagen). Gouged samples from the blocks weighing ~10mg from each of the tissues and processed according the protocol for isolating RNA from blocks of paraffin-embedded tissues.

Tissue identification is available in this GitHub Issue

NF-10-22
NF-10-23
NF-10-24
NF-10-26
NF-10-28
NF-10-30
SN-10-16
SN-10-17
SN-10-20
SN-10-25
SN-10-26
SN-10-31

IMPORTANT:

• Prior to beginning, I prepared an aliquot of Buffer TR1 by adding 40μL of β-mercaptoethanol (β-ME) to 4000μL of Buffer TR1).
• Reconstituted DNase I with 550μL of RNase-free H2O. Aliquoted in 100μL volumes and stored @ -20C in the “-20C Kit Components” box.

Isolated RNA according to the PAXgene Tissue RNA Kit protocol with the following alterations:

• “Max speed” spins were performed at 20,000g.
• Tissue disruption was performed by adding ~25-50 glass beads (425 – 600μm diameter) with the Disruptor Genie @ 45C for 15mins (in the Friedman Lab).
• Shaking incubation step was performed with Disruptor Genie
• Samples were eluted with 27μL of Buffer TR4 x 2, incubated @ 65C for 5mins, immediately placed on ice and quantified on the Roberts Lab Qubit 3.0 with the RNA High Sensitivity Assay (ThermoFisher Scientific) using 5μL of each sample.

Results:

Concentrations (Google Sheet): 20170710_RNA_qubit_oly_histo_blocks

Well, the good news is that there’s RNA from all the samples and it seems to be in relatively high concentrations!

The bad news is that the concentrations for 10 of the 12 samples were too high and outside the range of the Qubit RNA HS Assay! Since we don’t have the broad range RNA assay, I can’t properly quantify the remaining samples. However, these samples are being sent to Katherine Silliman at some point, so I’ll leave it up to her to quantify the samples. I’m also guessing that she’ll run them on a Bioanalyzer to assess their integrity prior to beginning library construction, so that will also yield concentrations for the samples.

Samples were stored at -80C temporarily.

Samples will be sent to Katherine Silliman for high-throughput library construction and sequencing once I hear back from her regarding her availability to receive the samples.