# Back to Old Books Toward Affordable Research: Homemade Phenol-Based Reagent for Triphasic RNA Purification

## TL;DR

This study shows how to make a low-cost, homemade reagent for RNA purification that works as well as commercial products.

## Contribution

A cost-effective homemade phenol-based reagent for RNA purification is developed and validated.

## Key findings

- Homemade phenol-based reagent is comparable to commercial reagents in RNA purification.
- RNA was successfully extracted from various biological sources using the homemade reagent.
- The homemade method is cost-effective and suitable for resource-limited settings.

## Abstract

Covid-19 crisis did hit many socio-economic aspects in the whole world. In the scientific research, the problem is getting even worse, since most of materials and consumable are allocated to the health sector. Many research laboratories around the world have big delay in receiving their purchases to accomplish their research projects. In the developing countries, the situation is much more difficult, since most of the funding resources are directed to the Covid-19 crisis and there is a notable increase in reagents’ prices. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to make a homemade reagents for RNA purification from eukaryotic cells/tissues. The homemade phenol-based RNA extraction reagents were prepared using saturated phenol pH 4.3 (adjusted by 0.5 M citrate buffer) and guanidine thiocyanate. To validate the phenol-based reagent, RNA was purified from different biological samples (cell line, tissues, and fungi) using homemade phenol-based versus a commercial one. Concentration of RNA samples extracted from the same number of cells were compared to assess the homemade preparation of phenol-based reagent. In conclusion, homemade phenol-based reagent is cost effective and comparable to the commercial one. Using homemade phenol-based, RNA extraction was successfully purified from different biological sources.