What Is Nucleic Acid Extraction?

Nucleic acid is the main material for storing, copying, and transmitting genetic information. Nucleic acid extraction is one of the most fundamental steps in molecular biology applications and is a prerequisite for many experiments. The quality of extracted nucleic acid will directly affect the results of subsequent detection in experiments. Traditional nucleic acid extraction methods are both time-consuming and laborious, in addition to operators requiring professional training.

Magnetic beads (MBs) are considered a powerful tool for nucleic acid extraction. Coupling of magnetic properties with specific ligands in MBs allows the separation and purification of nucleic acids in a highly efficient and specific manner. In fact, this technique has driven a technological revolution in biological research.

Nucleic acid extraction by magnetic particles?

The method of extracting nucleic acids by MBs is widely used in various fields. Applying a magnetic field attracts the target-bound molecule towards the magnet, separating them from the unwanted material or inhibitors without disturbing the nucleic acid of your interest. The method of extracting nucleic acids by magnetic beads has become the mainstream of modern molecular biology.

What are advantages of magnetic separation of nucleic acids?

Magnetic separation of nucleic acids has several advantages compared to other techniques used for the same purpose. A major advantage of MBs application in extraction is that the aggregations do not need centrifugation, which can significantly ease the test process and equipment requirements, thus improving efficiency and lowering cost.

Nucleic acids can be isolated directly from crude sample materials such as blood, tissue homogenates, cultivation media, water, etc. The particles are used in batch processes where there are hardly any restrictions with respect to the sample volumes. Due to the possibility of adjusting the magnetic properties of the solid materials, they can be removed relatively easily and selectively even from viscous sample suspensions.

In fact, magnetic separation is the only feasible method for the recovery of small particles (diameter approx. 0.05–1 μm) in the presence of biological debris and other fouling material of similar size. Furthermore, the efficiency of magnetic separation is especially suited for large-scale purifications.

MagIso™ DNA & RNA Magnetic Silica Particles for your research

The isolation of DNA or RNA is an important step before many biochemical and diagnostic processes. Many downstream applications such as detection, cloning, sequencing, amplification, hybridisation, cDNA synthesis, etc. cannot be carried out with the crude sample material.

CD Bioparticles has developed MagIso™ DNA & RNA Magnetic Silica Particles for rapid and reliable isolation of nucleic acid from plant tissues, whole blood, serum, plasma, buccal swabs, saliva, bacteria, plasmids, forensic samples and other body fluids. They can be easily adapted to Magnetic Nucleic acid Extraction Instruments to realize automatic high-throughput and high-purity extraction and purification of DNA/RNA.

These magnetic particles have excellent magnetic properties, just taking 3 seconds for complete separation, and are flexible for manual or automated high-throughput DNA/RNA isolation. The isolated DNA is immediately ready-to-use in downstream application such as sequencing, in vitro transcription, restriction enzyme digestion, and or transfection of robust cell lines.

References
1. Tang, C., He, Z., Liu, H., Xu, Y., Huang, H., Yang, G., … & He, N. (2020). Application of magnetic nanoparticles in nucleic acid detection. Journal of nanobiotechnology, 18(1), 1-19.
2. Berensmeier, S. (2006). Magnetic particles for the separation and purification of nucleic acids. Applied microbiology and biotechnology, 73(3), 495-504.

Article source: https://article-realm.com/article/Health-Fitness/Medicine/47663-What-Is-Nucleic-Acid-Extraction.html