Automated serial extraction of DNA and RNA from biobanked tissue specimens

Background With increasing biobanking of biological samples, methods for large scale extraction of nucleic acids are in demand. The lack of such techniques designed for extraction from tissues results in a bottleneck in downstream genetic analyses, particularly in the field of cancer research. We have developed an automated procedure for tissue homogenization and extraction of DNA and RNA into separate fractions from the same frozen tissue specimen. A purpose developed magnetic bead based technology to serially extract both DNA and RNA from tissues was automated on a Tecan Freedom Evo robotic workstation.