Date of Completion

Spring 5-1-2020

Thesis Advisor(s)

Yong Tang

Honors Major

Biological Sciences

Abstract

RNA is used in many laboratories for quantitative experiments. The quality of the RNA is crucial for these experiments and can be affected by DNA contaminants. Such contaminants can be eliminated through the use of RNase-free DNase, but RNase-free DNase produced by companies such as Qiagen can run up to hundreds of dollars. Studies looking at the effectiveness of RNase-free DNase are few even though many labs use it in RNA extraction. The goal of this experiment was to compare Qiagen to RNase-free DNase manufactured by other companies in the hope of finding a DNase that is more cost-efficient but also produces high-quality RNA similar to that of the DNase from Qiagen. The results of this study showed that the RNase-free DNase produced by Thermo Fisher and Promega can purify RNA samples, resulting in a similar quality to the samples treated with the DNase produced by Qiagen and can be used as a more cost-efficient alternative.

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